


Riverdale High's Last Annual Father-Daughter Winter Fling

by jugheadjones



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Multi, Multi Chapter, a bunch of other characters are mentioned, csa ment with grundy, fred was shot survived and is recovering, i forgot there was a part about fp having grindr in this, no i dont ship fred and veronica you absolute yahoos, post season one, tbh everyones recovering, thats how you know your fanfic's off the rails, there's some past parentdale stuff in here eventually
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-03
Updated: 2017-09-15
Packaged: 2018-12-23 05:58:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11983623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jugheadjones/pseuds/jugheadjones
Summary: Fred sets the knife down, shaking his head. “Let me get this straight. You want me to go out with your girlfriend?"It's a father-daughter dance, Dad." Archie stands his ground, arms folded. "It would mean a lot to her."





	1. the point before it all goes downhill

  **part one: famous last words**

* * *

Fred’s standing at the kitchen counter when Archie gets home, leaning heavily on one leg in absence of a crutch, slicing vegetables for pasta salad with the sleeves of his flannel shirt pushed up to his elbows. He turns and smiles mildly over his shoulder at the bang of the screen door, the equally loud impact of Archie’s gym bag on the hardwood a half-second behind.

“How was practice?”

“Good!” He expels the word in a flurry of youthful energy, the way he’d make a pass on the football field - sharp and breathless and full of momentum. The slap of it is like the sound the door had made bouncing off the wall. “Dad, what are you doing Friday?”

“Oh, you know. I thought I’d do some cross-country skiing.” Fred keeps his eyes on the cutting board, slow and steady as Archie was wired, carefully sectioning a cucumber. “Maybe try some windsurfing. Run a marathon, if I’m up to it.”

“Woah, what’s with the sarcasm all of a sudden?” Archie drifts closer, sneaking a slice of cucumber out from under the blade of the knife. “I don’t like this attitude, Dad.”

It’s the kind of dig they might have made at each other in the old days, when Archie had finally reached that old-but-still-young-enough age to begin to threaten the balance of authority, and their foundation of mutual respect and adoration was so solid that they could do with treating each other like college roommates once in awhile. But now there’s a hesitancy in it, a worried, unspoken question, a plea for normalcy. The goad has an apology in the same breath.

“Watch your fingers,” protests Fred, but passes him a second slice of the vegetable a moment later, demeanour softening as if in regret. “I’m sorry. Just frustrated.”

“Can I help?”

“No. It’s not your fault.” He hands him a final slice and scrapes the cucumber into a bowl, pausing to rinse his hands briefly at the sink. One of his sleeves has begun to slide down his arm and he shoves it back up, leaving it damp. “I’m sorry.”

“You took a bullet for me, Dad, I think you have a right to be frustrated.”

Fred tenses, because they don’t talk about it like that, at least not often. “Hey. I was doing my job, kiddo. I was keeping you safe.” He skates his hand through Archie’s hair, thumb caressing the peak of his hairline. Archie closes his eyes. The moment lingers momentarily, and then he decides to leave it. “What’s happening on Friday?”

“Oh.” Archie backs out from under Fred’s hand. “Well, I have a hot date lined up for you, but if you don’t _want_ it-”

Fred pauses with his knife primed above the ripe skin of a tomato, an eyebrow quirked in surprise. “Come again?”

“Okay, well, it’s kind of a favour.” Archie hovers, eyes on the cutting board until Fred carves off a piece and lets him take it. “But it’s for a good reason.”

“You know, if you want a real snack, there’s stuff in the fridge.”

“I’m okay.” Archie bites into the hunk of tomato and spills some juice down his chin.

“Sorry, explain this to me.” Fred keeps chopping, making neat rings on the cutting board. “Who’s my date with? Why do I have a date?”

“Veronica.”

“What?” Archie reaches unhelpfully for another piece of tomato, saying nothing. Fred pushes his hand away. “Archie-”

“Well, I was thinking you could take her to the dance on Friday.”  

Fred sets the knife down, shaking his head. “Let me get this straight. You want me to go out with your girlfriend? Where are you going to be on Friday, Mars?”

“It’s a father-daughter dance, Dad.”

Fred blinks at him. “O-kay. Well, that explains- very little, actually. Why would-”

“It would mean a lot to her. I know it sounds weird, but Betty’s going, and Ron’s never been able to do stuff like this with her dad. He’s never made time for her, and now he’s not around. So this is just something else she’ll never get to do.”

“Riverdale High really still does that? _This year?_ Isn’t that a little-”

“Messed up? After Clifford Blossom? Yeah. That’s what I said. But the girls are all into it.”

“I was going to use _tasteless_.” Fred adds some tomato to the bowl. “Archie, you’re a sweet kid. But Ronnie probably wants to be there with her own dad. She doesn’t want a rental.”

“I don’t think so. Her dad _can’t_ come, anyway, he’s still in prison. I think she really wants to do it. You didn’t see her at lunch today. Please, please, _please_ , Dad.”

“Hold your horses.” Fred turns to face him, knowing already in some deep-seated way that the battle’s lost. The day he finally managed a firm _no_ to Archie’s _please_ would be a great day indeed. Still, he tries to stand his ground.

“Archie, I don't know if this is a good idea.”

“Why not? It’s just for an hour or two. If she hates it, at least she knows she’s not missing anything.”

“But it’s - I’m not her _father_.”

“So what? You’re better than her father.”

Fred smiles, tired. “Son-”

“Dad, you’re making it a bigger deal than it is.” Archie grips his forearm, insistent. “This matters a lot to her. She’s still new at school, and she’s trying really hard to start over. She needs a chance to do this.” Fred starts stirring the pasta, but Archie remains where he is, hanging off his arm. “I can’t do this for her. It’s gotta be you.”

“Have you asked Veronica how she feels?”

“About the dance? I told you, she really wants to go.”

“About going with someone else.”

“Well, not yet, because I didn’t know if you’d do it.” Archie lets Fred hand him the spoon and obediently starts turning dollops of vegetables into the pasta. “But just ask her.”

Fred wipes his hands on his jeans. “I don’t think she’ll have fun with me, Archie. I’m not in shape to dance.”

“No one dances anymore, Dad. You just kind of have to sway.” Archie shoves the bowl energetically away and loops his arms around Fred’s neck. “This is all you do for a slow song. And for a fast one, you just kind of-” He takes a step back and executes an oddly-timed shuffle, moving his shoulders and bobbing his head to an imaginary beat. Fred laughs out loud.

“Your generation is so weird.”

“Says the generation that invented fanny packs.” Archie’s winning, and he knows it. He sags back against Fred, catching him in a gentle, pleading hug. “Come on, you love corny stuff like this. I bet they play old music.”

Archie’s idea of old music is anything that’s aged out of the Top 40 slot on the radio, and Fred isn’t seduced. “You just told me Hal Cooper will be there.”

“But you like Veronica, don’t you.” Archie tightens his arms playfully around Fred’s neck. “Don’t you?”

“Of course I do.”

“Then it can’t hurt, can it?”

 _Famous last words_ , thinks Fred, but lightly, because it was, after all, a father-daughter dance. Corny, outdated, kind of weird, certainly insensitive in their current climate, but otherwise harmless. He’s good with kids. If Veronica’s uncomfortable he’ll take her home, and if she just needs to talk to someone, he can do that too. He’s been playing surrogate dad to half the kids in Riverdale since he was old enough to coach Little League.

“I’ll ask. But that’s all I’m promising. If you swear it won’t make her uncomfortable.”

“I swear.” Archie hugs him tighter, but without his usual gusto, careful of his still-damaged torso. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

“All right, all right,” says Fred, thinking he’d probably go to the moon if Archie got it through his crazy head that he wanted him to. “I guess it can’t hurt.”

* * *

  **part two: the verb baiser**

* * *

Archie catches up to Veronica at her locker, as she’s carefully tucking her River Vixen uniform into her bag as a reminder to wash it later. The rattle of his bookbag and the heavy clump of his converse precedes him, so that she knows who it is before she even looks up. She takes a quick second to adjust her headband.

“Hey, Ron.” His face is alit with the delighted, goofy grin he always gets when he sees her and it makes her love him a little more. He leans against the unused locker beside her, filling her field of vision with the blue-and-gold of his varsity jacket and the sunlit copper of his hair.

“To what do I owe the pleasure, Archiekins?” Second is his free period, and he likes to be in the gym early, before the upper-years get there and spread out.

“My dad’s going to call you after school today and ask you to the dance. I told him that I'd just tell you he was down but, you know,” Archie lifts his shoulders in a shrug and rolls his eyes, as though he finds Fred’s quirks inexpressibly exhausting. “He wants to call you on the phone and do it properly.”

“Very twentieth-century. Did you tell him we don’t have a landline?”

“I did, but I don’t think he believes me.” He reaches out and takes her books under his arm, waiting until she’s checked her hair and lipstick one last time before he shuts the locker door for her. “He can’t wrap his head around a phone that’s not attached to the wall. But you’re okay if I give him your phone number?”

“Archie, if there’s anyone on the face of this earth I trust, it’s you and your dad.” Spinning her combination lock, she holds her arms out for the books, but he doesn’t give them to her.

“I got it. I’ll walk you.”

A little flutter of happiness glows in her chest, and she bites back the instinct to make a joke. Instead she loops an arm through his and lets him walk her toward her class, the same way that Betty’s confided in her that she’s dreamed about for years. A handful of heads turn: they look good, and she knows it - and even Valerie gives them an honest smile as Josie, beside her, raises her hand to Veronica in a wave.

She wasn’t stupid. She had Archie wrapped around her finger, and she knew it, and though she didn’t plan to take advantage of that fact any time soon, the girl she was in New York has carefully tucked that information away in case she needed it, is cautioning her not to let it slip. She can’t help but wonder if she’s manipulated them into this, him and Fred both, just because it was something she wanted. It hadn’t been Archie’s idea. It had been hers. But she knew that Archie _thought_ that it was his idea, and the disconnect frightens her.

She wishes with a sad twinge of longing that her self-awareness was not so painfully acute, that she could enjoy herself without constantly second-guessing her own motivations. Hurting Archie would destroy her, and yet she knows she’s capable of it. Stringing Archie along, getting everything she wants out of him and using him up - that she’s also capable of. She wouldn’t be the first woman to do that to him, and she lives in fear of being the second, in being lumped in with Grundy in his mind. There was only so much a person could take. If she hurt Archie she didn’t know that he’d ever trust again, and it frightens her sometimes to carry that around, to feel responsible for the rest of his life.

“Here you are.” He looks thrilled to have delivered her to the right door and she bites back a giggle.

“Archie, this is the science lab. I have French this period.”

“Oops.” His face shadows momentarily, but he grabs her by the arm and whirls her back around into the hall. “Oh, well. We’re almost there. That means your big test is now, right?”

She’s taken aback that he remembers - she’s never had someone be so attentive before. Even Hermione hadn’t remembered to wish her good luck, though she usually did - her mother was so preoccupied with the possibility of Hiram’s return. “Yeah,” she says. “The reading comprehension, I’m not worried about. But the conjugation -”

“You’ll do great.” There’s such earnest belief in his voice that for a moment she knows absolutely that he’s telling the truth. “Ms. Dalton isn’t that bad. Her bark is worse than her bite. Do you want me to quiz you?”

In answer she leans in and kisses him, a hard press of her lips onto his. “Je baise,” she murmurs, and cups his cheek with her bright fingernails. “Tu baises, elle baise -” Another kiss - “Nous baisions,” A third, on his cheek. “Vous baisiez-” On his ear -

“Elles baisent,” he finishes, (Archie had taken French the year before) and she kisses him one last time then, so long and sweet and slow that when she pulls back he looks momentarily lost out of space, eyes unfocused, cheeks flaming. She remembers something Hermione had said before they moved - _I know it’s hard Ronnie, but those small town boys - they’ll love you. They’ll never have known anything like you._

It works both ways, though, because she’s never seen anything like him - his fenced-in, main-streeted world of chok’lit shops (what the hell did that mean, anyway? No one had explained it to her) and drive-in movies and big backyards. Father-daughter dances that girls went out and bought big taffeta dresses for and talked excitedly about at lunch while their boyfriends looked on in dismay, shut out. She’s never conceived of a father-daughter dance outside of the punchline of a dirty joke or a 1960’s time capsule. But in Riverdale it went on like clockwork, every winter. It had before she was here and it would after she was gone. Not even a string of murders and suicides had deterred it, and after that, nothing would.

She wants to smooch him one last time, but thinks he might have a heart attack so she only tweaks his earlobe playfully and slips her books out of his arms. “I think I’ve got the hang of it now. I’ll see you after class.”

“Okay,” he whispers, and then seems to shake himself out of a trace. “And don’t forget, my dad-”

“I won’t,” she calls, and feels that odd twinge of guilt again, deep down low in her tummy.

She tells herself it’s nothing. Archie and his dad are good people, and they’ve had bad things happen to them. The guilt was normal. But nothing bad was going to happen because of this.

Nothing at all.

Reassured, she takes her seat beside Kevin in the middle of the class. And when Baiser (french verb; to kiss) comes around on the test, she conjugates it perfectly.

* * *

  **part three: one for the girl from the fifties love songs**

* * *

 She knows it’s ridiculous, but she’s kind of excited about this phone call.

Veronica barrels into the apartment after school, almost knocking Smithers over in her haste to get to the living room sofa. She knows she doesn’t have to take the call at home - cell phones were invented for a reason - but it seems almost right to, like a sappy fifties love song about girls who sat around on Friday nights waiting for the phone to ring. She remembers the phone in her childhood bedroom - a big, fluffy, bubblegum-pink princess phone with a receiver - and wishes she hadn’t left it behind. That was the phone you ought to take a call like this on. Fred was old school. He’d appreciate it.

Okay, and she’s looking forward the dance too - even though Kevin’s promised it won’t be half as impressive as that first dance she’d attended with Archie, and indeed that, according to his sisters, the night is usually pretty lame. _A lot less Met Gala than Uncle Randy’s Hoedown_ , he’d promised her, but she’s excited anyways, and not just to pick out shoes. At the end of the day a dance was a dance, music was music, and while it wouldn’t compare with her usual friday nights there’d be colour and sparkle and sound.

She’s itching to go dress shopping - even though she doesn’t technically have a date yet ( _oh, hurry up, Fred_ , she thinks, anxiously tracing the square of her cell phone in her lap - _Hurry up, Fred of the landline phone, I’m suddenly nervous and I’m from New York and it’s embarrassing)._ Hal, in his haste to smooth over the last few months and pretend they had never happened, is taking Betty - Polly was too pregnant - and though she tries to act like it doesn’t mean everything to her, Veronica can tell she’s excited. They have a dress-shopping date pencilled in for tomorrow night. For all Hal’s shortcomings, he was still Betty’s dad, and they’d always had a special relationship.

For Veronica’s part, she thought he was a bit of an asshole. He might want to act like their family had never split, but the front window of the Register Office was still held together with cardboard and tape, his daughter was visibly, heavily pregnant, and his next door neighbour had been bedridden for over a month because of a gunshot wound. There were things you couldn’t obstinately ignore. And yet, if she’d learned anything about Riverdale, it was that it would try.

“Are you waiting for Mr. Andrews to call, Miss Veronica?”

She starts briefly out of her reverie but smiles at Smithers’ interruption. Her mom’s out - probably therapy-shopping, but it was the right hour too for a pre-dinner lawyer’s meeting. Veronica scoots over on the couch to make room for him. Smithers has seen her through many a friday night phone call, though usually she was the one doing the dialing, debating with the butler over a platter of smoked-salmon pastries as to which heart she should break and who she should let down easy and who would bore her the least.

They don’t dates like this in New York - there you shoot a grubby text off, _hey, want to hang out_ \- fourteen minutes later you make out a little in front of a movie, after an hour or so you kick them out and let them dial for an Uber. Okay, maybe millennial dating’s like that everywhere, only you wouldn’t know it from the way Betty talks about boys - and if Fred had never learned to navigate an iPhone, he’d probably find tinder appalling. (Kevin had implied once, however clandestinely, that Jughead’s dad might have a Grindr profile, and she wasn’t sure what to make of that. She still hopes it had been a joke she’d badly misheard.)

“I sure am, Smithers.” She sets the phone down on the arm of the sofa and tucks her knees up to her chest. “He’s keeping me waiting.”

“You did sprint all the way home.” His indulgent smile is warm, friendly. She can tell he’s happy for her.

Smithers has met Fred only once, but liked him - she figures he was a hard man to dislike. Even so, Veronica hadn’t expected such wholehearted support from the former butler, whose loyalty to her father usually bordered on fanatic. She realizes he wants above all for her to be happy, and with a sad jolt of disloyalty understands that the last time her father made her unquestioningly happy was very long ago. Even when things were at their best between them, she couldn’t have counted on him for something like this. This sense of almost childish fun and anticipation carries her back to something very old, a time where she was six or seven and Smithers would push her on the swingset in the garden.

The ring startles her and she lets out a little shriek of fun and panic. "Smithers, get it!" she yells, leaping off the couch and away from the phone. Smithers raises an eyebrow but obligingly takes her phone from it’s perch on the sofa arm and swipes the screen.

"Miss Lodge’s answering service." After a moment, he extravagantly covers the bottom of the screen with one gloved hand and holds it slightly away from his ear. "A Fred Andrews for you, madam." 

Veronica stifles a giggle. "Tell him I'll take it."  
  
"Miss Lodge will speak to you, sir." says Smithers with exaggerated formality. "Please hold just a moment.”

“Stop,” she whispers, and swats him accusingly on the arm. He hands her on the phone and retreats back to the kitchen.  
  
"Hello?"  
  
"Hi Ron. How was school?"

Maybe there’s something to be said for a landline after all, because his voice is very near and warm in her ear, and she’s taken aback by the easiness in it, the naturalness with which he asks the question. Like they were already father and daughter, she thinks, amused, remembering the same thoughtfulness with which Archie had asked about her test.

"Oh, it was good. You know. School."  
  
"Ms Dalton still give those killer French tests?”  
  
She smiles, because Archie must have told him it was her test today. "You said it."

There’s a brief silence, then, but it’s not awkward - she hears the pulse of their breath and the crackle of the line between them before Fred clears his throat softly and goes on.  
  
"Well, this father-daughter dance is coming up, and a little bird told me you and I are both dateless. So I was wondering-” He speaks carefully, weighing each word. “-how you felt about giving me the pleasure of your company that evening. And you don't have to say yes just because I'm Archie's dad."

An intense affection for him swells in her and she smiles, sitting back down on the couch. “A little bird, huh? What kind?”

“A red-headed swallow.”  
  
Smithers is watching her from the doorway and she winks at him. "Mr. Andrews, I would love to."  
  
“Really?”

“Sure. But - be honest.” She leans forward, propping her chin on her knees with one bent elbow. “Do you really want to take me? Or is it a pity thing? Or is it, you know, Archie.”

Fred laughs a bit. “I thought I’d be asking you the same question. I’d like to do it," he says honestly. "I don't get out much anymore."

The warmth she feels for him mushrooms into a glow and blocks out the hesitation. “Well, thanks. I’ll see you then.”

“Hang on. What time can I pick you up?”

Pick her up! Of course. Score one for the girl from the fifties love songs. She almost bursts out a time at random, but remembers in the nick of time that it starts at seven. “Six-thirty.”

“Six-thirty,” he repeats kindly. “I’ll be there. Thanks, Ron.”

There’s a lot contained in that _thanks, Ron_ and she feels touched again, and sorry for him, and brimming with love.

 _Potential Father-in-Law,_ she thinks, tapping the end call button. _Good candidate._

But the silliness leaves her as she sits there with the phone dead in her hand, and even the thought of the new dress she’s going to buy tomorrow doesn’t quell it. For one bizarre second she thinks deep down she had wanted it to go wrong. She had wanted an easy way out.

 _Forget it,_ she tells herself, pocketing her phone. _You’re making a bigger deal out of this than it should be._ It was a couple of hours on a Friday night. She wasn’t signing guardianship papers. Betty would be there. Josie too, or at least she was hoping - Veronica was hoping for her. There was a long list of fathers in this town that she wouldn’t hesitate to smack across the face if she met them, and Josie’s was one.

“Everything all right, Miss Veronica?”

“Just fine, Smithers,” she says. “Six-thirty on Friday. Don’t let me forget.”

* * *

  **part four: pre-game**

* * *

“Do I look okay?”

“You look great, Dad.”

“You didn’t even look.” Fred checks his reflection quickly in Archie’s mirror before turning back to his son. “She’s your girlfriend, you know. Aren’t you afraid I’m going to embarrass you?”

“After sixteen years, I’m immune to it.” Archie glances up from the video game anyways and smiles. “You look really good.”

“Two thumbs up, Mr. A.” offers Jughead, lounging on the bed. They’re headed to Jughead’s foster parents’ for the night, and Archie’s sleeping bag and pillow are waiting patiently in the hall. The kids, however - he has to stop himself from thinking _his kids_ \- don’t seem to be in a hurry to get there. Maybe he understands why. There’s something touching about seeing Jughead back in Archie’s room, as if he’d never left it -  as if he’d go to sleep on that second mattress tonight, get dressed in the bathroom in the morning. It feels like he belongs there, and the room without him in it feels empty in retrospect.

“Take care of each other tonight. Eat lots of junk food.”

Archie’s busy jiggling buttons on his newest sports game - he doesn’t play a lot of first-person shooters anymore, and Fred knows why - but Jughead acknowledges him with a two-fingered salute. “You got it.”

“Your corsage is in the fridge.” says Archie, without looking up. “You told me to remind you.”

“Got it.” He kisses the top of Archie’s head and, after a moment’s hesitation, does the same to Jughead. “When will you be back tomorrow?”

“Whenever Rip Van Winkle decides to get up and let me make him breakfast,” says Jughead, pushing the back of Archie’s head playfully with his toe. “We’ll see if he wakes up before lunch this time.”

“It’s called brunch for a reason.” A blurry-faced football player scores a touchdown on the screen. Fred’s turned to go, and Archie calls out suddenly. “Dad, wait-!”

“What?”

Archie drops the controller, leaps up and wraps Fred in a hug. “I love you, that’s what,” he mumbles against his shoulder.

Fred holds him back. “I love you too.”

“Okay.” Archie steps back. “Go ahead.”

“Don’t worry,” promises Fred, which is another one of those _famous last words_ phrases, though he doesn’t realize it. “I’ll have fun.”

* * *

Smithers helps her with her hair, and then Veronica really feels like she’s six again, because that’s what he used to do whenever her mom was busy and the maid was off. Hermione’s out now, and the maid she grew up with has been off for quite awhile.

“What do you think, Smithers? Headband or no.”

“I’d keep it.” He smiles at her in the mirror. “It’s classic.”

“Aren’t you going to wish me good luck?”

“He’s the one who needs good luck,” says Smithers solemnly. “ You’re - how do the kids say it? A knockout.”

He offers to fasten her pearls around her neck for her, but she takes the clasp from his fingers and does it on her own. She feels self-sufficient that way, reassured. It had been Hermione who had taught her to faster dresses on her own, necklaces, bracelets, bending in front of her in the walk-in closet in their old house. Because you can’t count on anyone, she’d said. Because one day you might be alone, and you won’t want to be, but you’ll have to do your dress up on your own and keep going.

She pops up from the kitchen chair she’d re-appropriated for in front of her vanity and pirouettes in the centre of her room. “Anything wrong with my dress?”

“No. It’s perfect.”

She halts in front of the  full-length mirror and flashes herself an obliging smile, the burgundy chiffon of her skirt swishing around her knees. Betty had found the dress, unearthed prettily from the back corner of a designer sale rack, because Betty had an eye for soft, sweet, beautiful things that Veronica never would have looked twice at during an ordinary mall run. Betty also had an eye for bargains, and she’d had to ask the clerk twice if she was sure the price was that low. Betty had pulled her by the arm out of the store, laughing.

She admires it now: a simple, strapless bodice above a full chiffon skirt that stops gracefully just below her knees. The whole thing is a deep burgundy red, matching her lipstick. It’s unlike everything she’s ever owned, and the skirt brings to mind the dresses she used to get from relatives at birthday parties when she was in elementary school. Smithers would dutifully address thank you cards for them, though Hermione and Hiram would rarely let her wear the dresses in question. Hermione would be the one to choose her birthday dress, wrapped in plastic early and set aside for the day - a full block party (they owned the block) with mountains of presents and reams of balloons. By the time the cake was served - at least four tiers, often more - at least seven kids were already crying. By the time the party was over, one of them would always be her.

She feels at once disloyal for remembering it that way, and knots her hands anxiously in the skirt of her dress. It comes as a relief that the style holds that memory for her. She may have paid twenty-one dollars for the dress off the sale rack, it might have been hilariously out of place in her old Manhattan life, but she was still a Lodge. She wasn’t an Andrews.

 _Yet_ , she thinks with an absurd laugh, and feels okay again, though she has no real intention of ever walking down the aisle to meet Archie Andrews at the altar. Smithers draws closer to her, sensing her hesitation somehow.

“Anything else you need?”

“No, Smithers, thanks.” She smiles at him and wraps her arms quickly around his neck. “Just let him in when he gets here.”

"If he gives you any trouble, you let me know."

She laughs at that. Can’t imagine any kind of trouble going down in the pastel cushion of the Riverdale High Father Daughter dance, held in the gymnasium where they’d once held a rock-a-thon to raise funds for new library books. “I will, Smithers. Don’t worry.”

* * *

Fred pulls up early and idles in his truck for a little bit, finishing the song on the radio that he’d been listening to. When it’s done, he grits his teeth, reaches up for the annoyingly installed handle above his drivers side door, and hauls himself out of the truck and into a standing position. A spreading jolt of pain runs through him, slicing through his lower right side, and he shuts his eyes until it passes. Hardest part. Alice had offered him the use of her lower-to-the-ground station wagon, but the part of Fred that was still sixteen would rather stick pins in his eyes than ask his date to ride in that. He’d left his crutches at home too.

The handle above the door is mocking him. When he was younger and more arrogant he’d always assumed those things were only for the exceptionally elderly or invalid - how hard was it to get out of a _car_ , after all? Right up until that winter he’d never given the thing a second glance outside of teasingly grabbing it when Archie drove them home after getting his learner’s permit. Now it was the only thing keeping him from a broken leg.

He chooses some brief, colourful words for the next time he sees his physical therapist, and leans back in the car to grab his phone. On the way he rescues Veronica’s corsage - orchids in a non-denominational white, because he didn’t know what colour dress she’d be wearing- from the passenger seat. This wasn’t his first rodeo. In high school, Fred had taken five dates to three proms. He was no amateur.

He buzzes the doorbell to be let in, and it’s answered a moment later by a uniformed butler.

“Hubert,” he says amiably, and shifts the box with the corsage to one hand so they can shake. Smithers looks surprised, and a little threatened. Fred realizes too late that he probably didn’t use his first name all that often. They’d met briefly at the meeting with Mayor McCoy, but otherwise they’re strangers.

“Miss Lodge will be right down, sir.”

“Of course.” This part of the evening never changes. He’d asked Mary once what the hell it was girls did for those last five-to-ten minutes upstairs. Laugh at you, she’d said. Make you sweat it out.

“Mr. Andrews?”

He looks up as Veronica enters the room and smiles at the sight of her. Her dress is a floaty, burgundy chiffon, her trademark pearls catching the soft light above her neck. He feels a paternal rush of admiration for her, the way she glows in the room like the last embers of a fire, darkening everything else.  

“You look wonderful,” he says, but she’s going through a delighted incredulity of her own, her face splitting into a huge grin at the sight of his suit and tie.

“You look terrific!” She backs up and admires him. “I mean, I knew Archie got his good looks from _somewhere_ , but-”

He knows she’s lying but it feels good anyway. “I’ve got nothing on you,” he protests, stepping closer so he can pull off the appropriate maneuver with the corsage. Smithers follows him.

“Allow me, sir.” He takes the box, opens it, and holds it out. Fred wonders if he’s done this before. Veronica probably had suitors before she could walk.

“Thanks.” Fred pins the bundle of orchids carefully to the front of her bodice, discreetly keeping his eyes on hers. The dress is decently low-cut and there’s nowhere really to pin but chest. Pinning without looking is tricky, but he’s well-practiced - five dates for three proms and a whole dizzying slew of themed dances and homecomings - and he gets it on the first try.

Veronica fingers the flowers, looking amazed.

“Careful, they’re real.”

She looks back up at him and he thinks for a moment her eyes are misty - but maybe it’s just the dim of the foyer. He tries to change the topic.

“Have you got a coat?”

“Just a wrap.” He puts it over her shoulders for her, and her face glows with momentary surprise and delight. “Why, Mr. Andrews-”

“Has Archie never done this for you?” He’s going to give that kid a talking to if that’s the case. She just laughs, spins around, and hugs him spontaneously. His heart flutters with the affection. He hadn’t had very many visitors recently.

“Don’t squash your flowers.” It pains him to do it, but he gently disentangles himself from her.

“Oh, I’m sorry!” she bursts out, checking to make sure the corsage is okay. He’s never seen her in such a playful mood, and he smiles at her reaction.

“Ron, if it’s tacky, you don’t have to wear it.”

“Tacky?” Her eyes are glowing, her red lips stretched into a grin. “I love it.”

Smithers checks his watch discreetly and Fred nods. “Right. Well, we should get going.”

“Bye Smithers!” calls Ronnie, and Fred opens the door for her. His Ford looks decidedly unimpressive, sitting stoically at the curb between two glossier black cars. He indicates it with a theatrical gesture of his hand as he leads her down the steps.

“Your chariot awaits.”

Her small arm tucks perfectly into his. “You know I’ve never ridden in a pickup truck.”

“That’s very unlucky. Wait, don’t get in!” He lunges to throw an arm across her front as she reaches for the handle. “Here.”

He opens the door and offers his hand to help her step in, and once she’s figured out what he’s doing she laughs out loud. “You didn’t have to open the door for me!”

“What, Archie doesn’t do this for you either?”

“We’d never get anywhere!” She takes his hand gaily and steps up into the cab. “It would take forever.”

“Watch your skirt.” He closes the door gently and makes his way to the other side. The pain grips him again when he climbs up into the truck, low and needle-sharp in his chest, but it goes away quicker this time and is gone. He relaxes in the driver’s seat, gives her a friendly grin, and grips the wheel. Hardest part.  

He has to get out of that truck one more time, and then the worst, he thinks optimistically, will be over.

* * *

**part five: warm up**

* * *

 “You get to pick the music,” he says, once they’ve pulled away from the curb. “Choose any station you want, or if there’s nothing good on, I have some CD’s in my glove box.”

Archie had cautioned her against the CD’s - _you haven’t heard dad rock until you’ve been in my dad’s car_ , he’d promised - so Veronica dials the radio stations until she hears a song she recognizes. Fred smiles at her. “Hey, this is a good one.”

She smiles back, watching the rows of townhomes blur together out the window behind him. Fred’s fingers tap an anxious tattoo on the steering wheel as they reach a stoplight, his eyes fixed on some point in the rainy distance. He’s nervous, she thinks, and finds it endearing.

“So this dance,” she begins, trying to put him at ease. “You really do this every year?”

“The father-daughter thing? I think so. They did when I was in school.”

“So Riverdale actually likes to celebrate its long history of incest?”

If Fred had been drinking something, he would have choked on it. As it is, his ears go slightly red and his mouth twitches nervously into almost a laugh. “I - That’s one way of putting it.” His next smile is almost apologetic. “It must seem weird to an out-of-towner.”

“I think it’s sweet.”

He really laughs this time. “Well, everyone here hates it. I have four older sisters. My dad says when the doctor told him I was a boy the first thing he said was, ‘thank god i don't have to go to that fucking dance again.’”

She bursts into laughter at that, partly out of surprise that he’d sworn. “So why do they keep doing it?”

“Tradition, I guess.”

He looks younger, somehow now, more relaxed. Every so often he’ll tilt his head or smile in a certain way and she can see where Archie’s features are in his face. It's hypnotizing to look at, like one of those holograms that mapped two different pictures on top of one another.

“I can't get over how good you look,” she tells him.

He grins. "Do you want to hear a secret?”

“Of course.”  

“I only own one suit. This is the suit I got married in."

“What! You’re kidding.” She reaches out, awestruck, and touches his sleeve. “This is an artifact! Do you have wedding photos?"

"Not on me. Wouldn't that be sad!" He laughs. “I’ll show you them sometime if you want, though.”

“I do.” She leans forward, wanting to be closer to him. “Hang on, what about that white number you wore to homecoming?"

"Rented. On Mary's credit card, no less."

“You bad boy.”

“I didn’t sneak her credit card or anything,” he protests. “It was her idea!”

Veronica grins and sits back. She feels comfortingly that the initial tension has cleared, that they’re laughing together at the mutual absurdity of their situation. “How about baby photos?”

Fred laughs and reaches up into the compartment above the sun visor, brings down a beat-up leather wallet. He hands it to her while holding the steering wheel steady with one hand. “Knock yourself out. They fold.”

She opens the wallet and untangles an accordion of clear-plastic squares, each packed with grubby rectangles of picture. She gasps in delight. “How old is he here?”

“Four months.”

“He’s always had red hair.”

“The reddest.”

She flicks through them, admiring the creases in them, the evidence of age and handling. Archie’s babyhood unwinds freely under her manicured nails, turns into childhood and then an awkward stream of middle school picture days. One has a particularly garish orange background that matches his hair and soaks the colour from his skin. Fred laughs when she shows her. “Mary was so mad at him for picking orange.”

“I like this one.”

Fred only beams. “That’s his last day of Kindergarten. I like that one too.”

There are already cars spread out across the parking lot when they get there, the gymnasium lights spilling gold out onto the snowy lawn. Fred pulls into a space near the front, but before she can get out he reaches out and tugs gently on her arm.

“Ron, hang on.”

She turns to him, a question on her lips, but something in his face makes her quiet.

"Ron, if at any point it's too much, or it feels weird, or you just don't want to be here anymore, just let me know. I'll take you home no questions asked. Deal?"

She swallows, suddenly touched. “Deal.”

Fred smiles and pops the door of the cab open. “Don’t move. I’ll get your door.”


	2. the point where it starts going rapidly downhill

**part six: absence of discipline**

* * *

They’re halfway into the foyer when Veronica stops cold, one hand flying to her throat to clutch at her string of pearls. Fred has to jerk to a halt to keep from running her down.

“Oh my god, Cheryl!”

“What?”

“Cheryl-” she gasps, turning to face him, eyes bright and horrified. “I’ve been so wrapped up in - I didn’t even think -”

“Veronica.” He holds her arm, and that solid grip is tight and reassuring enough that her thoughts fall neatly into a row, like dominos slotting into place. “What’s going on?”

“It’s just that...” She stares helplessly at her arm, his hand gripping the crook of it. “All this happening, after everything… I didn’t even think how she must feel. I don’t know where she is tonight.” She glances back up into his face, hunting for reassurance. “Did she used to go to these things with her dad? Do you know?”

Fred grimaces apologetically. “I’ve never been.”

“Right, of course.” It’s odd, but with him holding her arm like that she feels a warm level-headedness flowing through her, a clarity of thought. “Well, it’s probably alright, but… would you mind if I called her? Just to make sure she’s okay?”

“Of course not.” She sees something sad in his eyes, something like guilt, and wonders if he’s upset he hadn’t thought of Cheryl either. “If we need to go find her just say the word. It’ll be a squeeze, but we’ll fit in the truck.”

“Okay.” She’s already tugging her phone out of her clutch. “And, um - I know this is asking a lot, but - on the off chance she might want to be here tonight -”

“By all means.” He grins. “If they see me coming in here too often without two girls on my arm I think I’ll lose my reputation.”

She flashes him a grateful smile and sprints on her toes to a corner of the hall, quickly locating Cheryl’s name in her contacts and pressing call. She’s expecting a long, tense period of wait, and is startled when the phone connects immediately.

“What’s up, Ronnie?”

“Cheryl!” Veronica’s heart is thumping. “Where are you?”

“Where am I? I’m just at the theatre.”

“The what?”

“The movie theatre. Don’t spread it around, though, okay? It’ll sound like I don’t have anything better to do on a Friday.”

If she stands still enough she can feel her heart beating in her ankles. There’s so much adrenaline in her body that she can’t process the words, the simple, casual comfort of them. She’d expected ice, fire, dynamite, armageddon. Not the movies.

“Who with?” she asks cautiously, probing the story for cracks, exploring. “Your foster family?”

“Kind of. This girl I met. Why, where are you?”

Cheryl sounds so honest, so unhurt, that she wonders for a moment if she’s about to make it worse. She hesitates, but plunges in. “The father-daughter dance.”

“Oh, fuck that.” says Cheryl with venom. “Wait.” Her voice softens, interested. “With your dad?”

“No.” says Veronica distractedly, staring at the pattern on the tile. From inside the gymnasium she can hear the drifting sounds of music. “Archie’s dad.”

“Yum! DILF alert.” Someone says something in the background, and Cheryl huffs. “Hang on. No, I don’t want real butter.” Her voice crackles and then re-settles, loud and clear. “Sorry, Ronnie. I’m still here. So what’s going on?”

“I just wanted to check on you. You’re okay?”

“Everything fine, Ronnie.” Maybe it’s the connection, but her voice sees to have an uncharacteristic warmth in it, a shy seriousness under her words. “I mean, I’m taking it slow. But it’s going to be. I really mean it.”

Veronica smiles at the words. “Okay. But call if you need me, yeah?”

“Okay. Thanks, Ron.” Cheryl says those two words the same way Fred had, the phrase bent double with gratitude. “Look, I gotta go, but tell me all about it later.”

“You bet.” She sees Fred watching her curiously and she gives him a thumbs-up, which makes him smile. “You’re my best friend, Cheryl.”

“You too.”

The walk back to Fred’s side feels like a dream, her head spinning slightly, her fingers still buzzing with anxiety. Fred frowns at her expression.

“Everything okay?”

“Everything fine,” she says distractedly, staring at the phone for a moment before tucking it away. It had been fine, and yet the worry had been so sharp and intense that it’s hard to believe it. It had seemed in that moment that she’d lost Cheryl entirely, and to find her alive and whole had been a surprise. Remembering the flippant, scorching way she’d dismissed the dance made her feel better. _Oh, fuck that._ Good for you, Cheryl, she thinks suddenly. Good for you.

“Ron? You sure?”

“Yeah,” she says, more decidedly now, suddenly and unsettlingly certain of it. In the centre of the past four months, certitude and stability feel like a dream. “She’s seeing a movie with her foster family.”

Fred watches her, looking as if he’s trying to see if there’s anything she hasn’t said. “In that case, she’ll be out in a couple hours. If you want to go check in with her again after, or make sure everything’s okay, we can go then.”

The _adultness_ of him is so reassuring. She’d forgotten how good it felt for someone else to tell you what the plan was. Veronica smiles gratefully and takes his arm up again. “Okay. Sounds good.”

“Can we head in? Any other fatherless kids we have to worry about?”

“Nope. You ready to make an entrance?”

“Born ready.”

The music grows louder as they walk arm-in-arm together toward the double doors. Veronica remembers suddenly that Cheryl hadn’t said she was seeing a movie with her foster family. Some girl I met, she’d told her. In the heat of the moment, the words hadn’t registered. For a brief moment she feels an insane tingle of jealousy, and then it’s replaced with a flooding sense of excitement. She hopes it’s what she thinks it is. Cheryl deserves that.

As they near the gym the ceiling is crisscrossed here and there with pastel pink streamers. Mr. Weatherbee is stationed by the door, greeting. He blinks rapidly in surprise when he sees them.

"I hope we're not breaking any rules," says Fred cheerfully as they reach the door. "But last I checked, I was a father and she was a daughter."

"Of course not," says Weatherbee, giving them a funny look. "I'll take your tickets, Miss Lodge."

Fred faces Weatherbee as she passes them over. "I never got to thank you for that card you sent me."

Weatherbee smiles in a tight-lipped way, looking equal parts embarrassed and fond. "The least I could do for a former student. Even-"

He hesitates for just a second, and Fred laughs. “Even a nuisance like me."  
  
"Fred, you and your boy both suffer from an absence of discipline and an excess of heart." Weatherbee tears the tickets distractedly and drops them behind himself into a glitter-adorned podium. “There are worse things in this world.”

Fred smiles and leads Veronica through the doorway into the gym. “He’s a good guy,” he says to her, as they leave Weatherbee behind them. “I think he's cracking up in his old age, though. Archie's the most disciplined kid I know.”

Veronica wouldn’t have the heart to argue with him. She gazes in surprise up at the twinkling lights spread across the ceiling, the silver paper stars that spill across the gymnasium walls in trailing galaxies. The streamers are pastels: pink, blue, pink again, and silver balloons adorn the corners of every wall. 

“Ron?” Fred had been asking her a question. She blinks suddenly and tears her eyes away from the decorations. He forces an apologetic grin, misinterpreting her enchantment. “I guess it is pretty corny, huh?”

“No,” she says earnestly. “Well, yes. But I kind of like it.”

All around them girls are in dresses like hers, some quite plain, others frilly, but all with a modest sweetness unlike Riverdale’s usual dance attire. She notices with a strange jolt of pride that not all of them have corsages. A refreshment table is laid out down the middle of the floor, a glittering punch bowl serving as the centrepiece. She notices that Sheriff Keller, his body turned toward one of Kevin’s sisters, is keeping a careful eye on it.

She sees Ethel, looking resplendent in blue, swaying to a slow song with a man Veronica doesn’t recognize, but who can only be her father. Her heart gives a thankful, happy swell, and though she doesn’t feel confident enough to go over and speak to the girl, she feels a lightness and calm in her anyways. She glances around for a glimpse of Betty - they’d promised to meet -  but keeps finding her eye caught by little details: the hand-painted banner over the far exit, the sparkling disco ball off to the right, the way that some of the fathers had matched their ties to their daughters’ dresses. She finds herself straining in multiple directions, her body turning every time something new catches her eye.

“Go wherever you want,” laughs Fred. “I’ll follow you.”

This was embarrassing. And implausible. She’d seen the inside of the Met Ball, for crying out loud - she’d been raised in the city, going to parties ten times this size before she could walk. And now she was looking around the Riverdale High gymnasium, dumbstruck, like she’d never seen a dance before. _Snap out of it_ , she commands herself, but it doesn’t dampen the rare euphoria she feels for the tacky streamers, the silver helium balloons with gold ribbons.

She sees Josie at last, her father with her, and her already jubilant heart soars. She all but sprints toward them, feeling the fluff of her unusually large skirt tickle her shins. Josie turns and sees her coming and lets out a joyful shriek just as Veronica plows into her arms. The two girls embrace tightly.

“Jose, I’m so happy for you!”

“Veronica, you look amazing!”

“So do you!” She steps back and holds Josie at arm’s length, admiring her dress. “Where did you get that?”

“It was my mom’s.” Josie smooths it down, pride lingering in the way she pleats the fabric. “Have you seen Valerie?”

“No! We just got here.”

“She looks incredible. Her dad too.” Josie leans in close to her. “Ron, is Fred your date?”

“Yes. Isn’t it wild?” Fred and Myles are exchanging awkward pleasantries behind them. “He’s being amazing. But I’m really happy your dad made it, Jose.”

“Thanks.” Josie hugs her, tight. Veronica screws her eyes shut and just lets herself feel. “You deserve it too.”

They talk excitedly for a bit longer, but Veronica’s head keeps turning to take in the room, and Fred and Myles have run out of things to say and have traded in conversation for staring with some longing over each other’s shoulders, as if searching among the crepe paper for the end of this social interaction. Josie smiles knowingly and tugs her dad by the hand. “I’ll catch up with you later, okay, Ron?”

“Okay.” She watches them go, swallowed into a colourful crowd of taffeta and lace. There’s something so different about this event, and as she watches the dancers it finally dawns on her. Most of the time, everyone comes to school dances to impress. To try their hand at the single life of twenty-something year olds, to mimic the clubs they’re not old enough to get into. Tonight, no one is trying to be grown up. They’re there to be daughters. She finds it suddenly, morbidly poignant, and almost feels a tear rise to her eye.

“Do you want a drink?” Fred asks, jolting her back into herself.

“Do you think it’s spiked?”

“I don’t know, Keller looks like he has a pretty close eye on it.”

So he had noticed too. Veronica smiles. “I would love a drink. Do you think Betty’s here yet?”

“I’ll keep an eye out. We can save a table for her.”

“Do you want to do that?” She knows Fred’s still recovering, had seen him limp briefly on the stone stairs. “I’ll get the punch.”

“No way.” He points at the smattering of white-lace tablecloths dotting the opposite side of the room. “Punch is my job.”

“Going to slip a mickey into it, are you?”

He looks briefly appalled, but then winks. “Go get a table.”

She keeps an eye out for other familiar faces as she drifts across the room. She recognizes less faces than she’d expected, but they all seem to notice her, turning curiously toward her as she moves. She hopes fleetingly that it’s the twenty-one-dollar-dress Betty had chosen but realizes that it’s probably her lack of date. Even the people who don’t know her know vaguely about her father - Ethel had spread the news of that relation far and wide after what had happened to Manford. Veronica doesn’t blame her for it, but she misses the anonymity. She feels often as though she would never escape the surname attached to hers.

She feels a stab of guilt at the thought, and misery curls in her as she lowers herself into a chair. It feels disloyal, she realizes. Not just wishing people didn’t recognize her, but all of it. Bringing Fred. Being here at all. It’s like pretending she’s someone else’s daughter. She feels briefly nauseous and suddenly wants to go. Fred would take her home if she asked, and she almost does, asks him to drop the punch and forget about it.

But she can’t bring herself to do it, not when he’s so carefully ladling two cups for them under the disco ball. Lodge girls didn’t quit, and they especially didn’t waste a full face of makeup and an attentive, doting gentleman in a tux. She straightens her shoulders and suddenly feels surer in her decision to stick it out until the end. She just has to stay focused.

As she watches him she realizes that Fred is attracting just as many curious stares as she is, maybe more. A careful smile starts to tug her lips. Some groups are whispering, but they’re all looking at him with an open, tender curiosity. He’s surrounded by the world’s most admiring gossips.

Fred leaves the punch bowl and heads toward her table, and every eye in the immediate vicinity follows. She smiles in greeting as he sits down, taking the offered glass and sipping tentatively. It’s watery, but good.

“What were you asking me earlier?” she asks.

“Hm? When?”

“After we talked to Weatherbee. I zoned out.”

Fred readjusts his legs carefully under the low table. “I just asked what your principal was like at your old school.”

“Gotcha.” She sets her drink down and rests her chin on her hands. “Nothing special. Only we had a headmistress, not a principal."

“Sounds intimidating"

"She was. But luckily I could intimidate her right back.” She feels a regret for the old Veronica, feels faintly embarrassed by her and glad at once to be here. “I like this better."

“I would too." Fred looks around the room, taking in the streamers, the hand-lettered sign. “This must have been an adjustment for you."

“You don’t know the half of it.” She’d been worried about talking to him, but it comes easily. She scoots her chair closer. "Have you ever lived anywhere else?"

"No.” He sips his punch thoughtfully. “I was born here. I grew up here. I've never even been on an airplane."

"Never?"

"No. My family used to drive everywhere."

 _Old school_ , she thinks triumphantly, sad for him, but enchanted at the same time. “Where would you drive?”

“Oh, all over. All of my childhood memories involve being squashed in the back of a van with four other kids. None of us get motion sick as adults, because back then it was a matter of survival. We’d usually aim for somewhere with water. Try to get to a beach.” He watches her. “You don’t have siblings, do you, Ronnie?”

“No.”

“Does it bother you? Do you wish you did?”

He looks so honest and so worried that it hurts her heart. He’d taken a bullet for Archie, and he still wanted to know if he’d let him down by not giving him siblings. “No. Not a bit.”

Fred absorbs that, nodding slightly to himself, eyes fixed on the far wall. Veronica leans in and touches his hand.

“So when do I inherit your construction company?”

“What’s that?”

“I’m your daughter now, aren’t I?”

Fred laughs. “Once I kick the bucket it’s yours. What do you know about cement?”

“What _don’t_ I know about cement.”

“That’s what I like to hear.”

The conversation turns to Archie, then, because it’s the greatest thing they have in common, and from that point on the evening soars. Fred is a never-ending encyclopedia of information about Archie, obliging with delighted humour when she asks for embarrassing stories but loyally recounting nothing more embarrassing than a broken bone, acknowledging these omissions with a secret, slant-lipped smile that simultaneously apologized and refused to do so. She loves him for it. Loves his loyalty, his passion, the way his eyes lit up when she asked a question he had an answer for.

She asks him what he did before Archie came along, because some people she can't imagine not being parents and Fred is one of them, and he says he waited for Archie and hoped for him and occasionally built things along the way. She thinks they’ll never get off the subject of Archie, but he surprises her, and after an hour she’s leaning closely in while he explains the nicknames of various rock and roll greats, ticking them off on his fingers.

“No, Elvis is the King, Bruce Springsteen’s the Boss, but Michael Jackson's the King of Pop-”

Veronica’s overwhelmed. "Do they give you some kind of book with all this information when you become a dad?"

Fred laughs and takes a bite out of a crumbly sugar cookie - they’d visited the refreshments table during a spirited conversation about Archie’s favourite colour and had both agreed they’d take the cookies and leave the rest. "You have to pass a test, actually.”

“Yeah? Where’s the cutoff point? Fifty out of a hundred or you’re finished?”

“Sixty out of a hundred. They’re raising the bar. But most of them are multiple choice.”

They talk about the menu at Pop’s, then (too many tomatoes, says Fred, who tolerates tomatoes most of the time but despises them in sandwiches) and extra-curricular activities that had been going on at RHS when Fred was in school.

“You were in a band?” Veronica asks, impressed.

“Yes. Just don’t ask what it was called.”

As they’re talking he seems halfway distracted by the sharp glitter of the disco ball, and Veronica smiles. “I guess this is your first time at one of these too, huh?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” says Fred mildly, raising the glass of punch to his lips.

“Sorry?”

He smiles, almost sheepish. “I went to one of these when I was in high school.”

Veronica blinks, confused. Fred shows no sign of elaborating so she leans forward, the chiffon of her skirt crinkling with the motion. “Hey, didn’t you just say you’d never been?”

“When?”

“When we got here! Out in the hallway.”

“Well…” He looks suddenly like he’s trying not to laugh. “It’s complicated.”

“Okay, Fred Andrews, spill it.” Veronica leans further forward, propping her elbows on the table. “You went to a father-daughter dance when you were in high school? Does Archie have an illegitimate sister I don't know about?"

Fred shakes his head. “Nothing that exciting.”

“Then what?”

“I started dating Mary - Archie's mom," he adds, unnecessarily, "in winter of senior year. Her parents were - still are - great people, kind to everyone. But I had this habit that drove them absolutely crazy, where I’d get it through my head to serenade her from outside her window at night. With, like, a boombox balanced on my shoulder.” He laughs. “It would be twenty degrees out, but of course, when you’re a kid, and especially when you’re in love, you don’t even care. I only pulled it off a handful of times, but as Mary would say, once is enough.

“Well, her dad got me back one time, because he waited until I was set up and turned the hose on me. Which would have been fine in the summer, but that was November, December, or something. And every time I’d do it they’d tell her to find a new boyfriend, and fast, because they didn’t want to hear my god awful singing for the rest of their lives.”

“And did they have to?”

“No. I gave up singing once I grew up enough to realize I sounded like a stepped-on cat. I don’t know where Archie gets his talent, but it’s not here.” He presses one hand over his chest. “Anyway, that’s the backstory. So this January, they’ve kind of put the freeze on me, because they’re sick of my impromptu winter concert series. They’d never come out and say I wasn’t welcome around Mary, but she suddenly had a lot of stuff piling up on Friday nights and couldn’t make time for me.”

“But what does this have to do with - ?”

“With the dance, right? I’m getting to that.” Fred stretches, raising his arms above his head and cupping his palms to his elbows. “Her father couldn’t make the dance that year because, ironically,” he gestures to his injured side, the one where the bullet had gone in -  “he had to go in for surgery. Nothing major, it was a tendon in his knee I think - he used to be a volleyball player, and he was always having leg trouble. But he’d waited for this surgery a long time, and there was no rescheduling it. Now, here’s the thing - Mary’s mom was really active in the PTA, she did a lot of volunteering and organizing for the school. I remember she used to chaperone all our field trips. But Archie’s grandpa, he’d always left that up to her. So none of the teachers or anyone had ever really met him.”

Veronica’s hand flies to her mouth.

“What?”

“I think I just realized where this is going.”

“Well, anyways,” continues Fred, trying and failing to hide a grin, “She’s at home on Friday night, no dance, no date with me, and she’d just bought a brand-new dress she wanted to wear somewhere. So she’s calling me up, telling me this, and I told her: ‘stay there, I’m coming to get you.’ And I did, only first I put on this old wig my sister had, and this fake pair of glasses with punched-out lenses. Then I drew a moustache on in pencil, borrowed one of my dad’s suits, and put on this massive hat and scarf.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“I’m serious. I borrow a car from a friend, swing by and pick her up, and show up at the dance as her-” He cringes, his apologetic smile flickering back on his face. “You know, her father.”

“Shut up _!_ I don’t know if I believe you. There’s no way you got away with that! No one was suspicious?”

“Oh, they were definitely suspicious. Especially after I not-too-discreetly kissed her. But, yeah,  we stayed in dark corners. I remember I had to hold up a conversation with one of our teachers at one point, and there was sweat running down the back of my legs the whole time. I was so sure the jig was up and they were just humouring me. But as far as I know, the school never found out. I mean, they probably had a lot of questions about how close we were dancing. And why her white-collar father was dressed like he was homeless.”

“But you really got away with it?!”

“Well, yes and no.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I _would_ have gotten away with it, and I did, too, for awhile. Until the point where her real dad showed up, and then it just kind of fell apart after that.”

Veronica’s hand flies back to her mouth. “He what?!”

Fred’s biting his lip to keep from laughing. “It’s not as bad as you think. The dance was almost over, and we were clearing out. Apparently there’d been a mix-up at the hospital, and his surgery was pushed to the next morning. Which wouldn’t happen now, but it’s Riverdale, and that hospital was only a few years old in the nineties. It’s one of the only new buildings around here. I remember them building it at the same time the old one was collapsing. This whole wing had black mold in it. And the foundation was built-”

“But what happened at the dance?” urges Veronica, certain Fred could talk about foundation for the rest of the evening.

“Right. Anyway, he’d called home to tell her, but one of her siblings had answered the phone and said she was already at the dance. I don’t know what he thought of that, maybe he figured she’d gone with friends, although I don’t think they’d let you in. They’re pretty much sticklers for tradition around here. But regardless, he shows up just as we’re walking out arm in arm. I will never forget the look on Mary’s face. Oh man, we knew we were cooked. He knew it was me, too, he didn’t hesitate for a second.”

“What did he say?” She’s too shocked to even laugh.

“Well, I’m not too proud of what I did next, but I dropped her arm like a hot potato and booked it as fast as I could in the opposite direction. And as I’m running out of the gym he just yells after us: ‘Fred Andrews, if you marry that girl I’ll kill you!’”

“And then you married her.”

“And then I married her,” he confirms.

A laugh finally bursts from Veronica’s lips, and she buries her face in her hands, shaking with laughter. Fred watches her, cheeks slightly pink. “I know, it’s bad.”

“I just can’t believe you kissed her! I’m picturing that scene from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.”

Fred laughs out loud. “So _that’s_ how it is in their family.”

“You were definitely a Ferris Bueller.”

“Has your mom not shown you pictures?” Fred folds his arms, mouth open in surprised delight. “That was our go-to Halloween costume. Your mom, Jughead’s dad and I.”

“Stop. You’re joking.”

“I’m not! You don’t know this? We did it - oh, at least two Halloweens.”

“Really?”

“Jughead’s dad was Cameron. He probably still has the Red Wings jersey.”

“And that makes you Ferris.”

“That was me.” He rubs his hands thoughtfully together. “I must have pictures somewhere.”

 _"Please_ tell me you do.”

“I’ll try to find them.”

“You know, I can’t believe you said that, because I love that movie.” Veronica’s spilled some of her punch in her laughter, and she edges her chair carefully away from the spill.

“Me too!” Fred looks radiantly happy. “Archie’s the same. It’s our favourite. I showed it to him when he was in middle school, and Mary used to go crazy from us quoting it back and forth all day long. She hates John Hughes.”

“Really? Why?”

“I can’t explain it. She thinks they’re all sappy crap. But no, tell Archie sometime. Sometimes when I call him he still answers the phone asking for the sausage king of Chicago.”

“Abe Froman, you mean?”

“That’s the one.” Fred’s smile reaches all the way to his eyes. “You know what’s my favourite? The line about European Socialism. I’m not European,” he quotes, “I don’t plan on being European, so who gives a crap if they’re socialists? They could be fascist anarchists, it still doesn’t change the fact that I don’t own a car.’ God, I thought that was funny. I don’t know my Tarantino from my Truffaut, but I still think that’s peak cinema. I got the name Truffaut from a TV special, I don’t even know what he’s made.”

“The 400 Blows,” offers Veronica, and shrugs at his interested expression. “We had a lot of old movie houses near us in New York.”

“That sounds nice.”

“Well, you guys had your own version.” She smiles. “The Twilight Drive-In. Like something out of Grease.”

“That’s us, alright. This town used to be a really nice place in the sixties.” Fred’s still smiling, a half-hearted quirk of the mouth, like he’s forgotten about it, but there’s something lost in his expression now, a sadness. “I mean, I wasn’t around - I’m not that old - but my dad used to tell me. My sisters were quite a bit older than me, and they were already grown up by the time I was your age. When I was a bit younger than you, they used to take me around Main Street and point out all the shops and things that they grew up with that weren’t there any longer. They’d say, you know, ‘we used to get haircuts here, and Debbie used to work there’, and they’d all be boarded up. But it used to be really something.”

“And now it’s…”

“I don’t know. I guess some things are like the drive-in. They get past their time.” He looks uncertain for a moment, but then breaks into a smile. “Do you want more punch before we get too serious?”

“Only if you’re getting up.”

“I am.” He stands carefully up and hesitates by the table. “Are you still having fun? Do you want to dance, or anything?”

“I’m having a great time,” she says honestly.

“Okay.” He looks like he doesn’t quite know whether to believe her or not. “I’ll be back.”

She realizes once he’s several paces away that she’d forgotten to ask him to bring a napkin. "Hey, Dad-" she calls teasingly, loud enough that several heads turn in their vicinity. Veronica stifles a giggle as Fred glances over his shoulder and comes back to her side. "You have the same name as everyone in this room."

"I have the same name as everyone in this town. Walk into my work sometime and yell ‘Dad’. Worse, try the home improvement store on Main Street. You'll turn more heads than a parade."

“This place is probably the worst.”

“Probably. What did you need?”

“A napkin. Thank you.”

“You bet.”

Under the strings of fairy lights, the huge punchbowl glitters. She watches Fred head off back to the refreshments table, head up, limping just a bit, and feels an odd, out-of-placeness, a sense that none of this was for her, or should ever have been. She looks around the room once more for Betty, hoping to be reassured, but the blonde is nowhere to be found. She pulls out her phone and shoots off a quick text.

_U ok b? V_

She holds the phone in her hand for a moment, feeling the dead weight of it, but no immediate reply comes, and she puts it back in her clutch. She hopes there isn’t some kind of fight going on at the Cooper house. Then again, maybe it’s a good thing. Maybe they’re figuring out they can’t just pretend the last four months never happened.

Josie and Myles have taken seats several tables from theirs, and are deep in conversation. Josie’s hands are moving quickly as she talks, but she doesn’t seem agitated, only passionate. We’ve switched, Veronica realizes, her mind still on Betty. _I’m the one pretending everything's okay._

“I think we got the bottom of the bowl,” apologizes Fred when he returns with their full glasses. “There’s all kinds of fruit and stuff in here.”

“I love fruit and stuff.”

“Good. Me too.”

He hands her the requested napkin - a pale carnation pink that makes her think again of the Coopers -  and she mops carefully at the spill from earlier. A grin lights her face at the memory of his story, and he squints at her, bemused.

“What’s up?”

“Just imagining you in a wig, taking your girlfriend to this thing.”

Fred laughs. “I should never have told you that.”

Steve Perry is singing _Oh Sherrie_ , and the dance floor is in full swing. This side of the gym is more subdued: theirs has easily been the rowdiest table in the vicinity, and they keep drawing curious looks from other guests who sound for the most part to be having tense, somber discussions about scholarships. Confetti has been released from somewhere and thin, glittery streamers are tumbling through the still air of the gym.

They sit in silence for a moment, and Veronica feels an aching uncertainty, a faint flutter of awful guilt. They’re really here now, her decision’s been made. She could have asked Fred to take her home, but she hasn’t. Meaning she’s willing not to be Hiram’s daughter for the evening. Meaning she’s even enjoying it.

Only that wasn’t true, because whatever she did she would still be Hiram’s daughter. That was in her too dark and too deep to get out. The girl she calls the old Veronica is still in there too, and even if you could scrape clean the places where she was her father’s daughter, she still wouldn’t be a girl who could belong to Fred.

“Do I remind you of my mom?” The question comes to her lips before she can stop it, and she doesn’t know why she’s asking, only that she needs to know.

“No,” Fred says simply. “You’re different from your mom.”

It hurts in all new ways, but she feels a nagging sense of gratitude, of freedom. He smiles at her, and she feels a gradual dissolve of the guilt in her, the disloyal relief. She knows suddenly where Archie gets his optimism.

It was just a father-daughter dance. It was only a father-daughter dance.

Under the disco ball, glimmers of light keep striking the surface of his wedding ring. She shakes her head. “I can’t believe you still fit into your wedding clothes.”

She’d been thinking only of Hermione, how her mother could only dream of saying the same, but realizes too late what she’s said, that the Fred Andrews sitting across from her weighed a good thirty pounds less than the Fred Andrews she’d met in September of that year. That after that stint in hospital in particular, he was probably more rapidly approaching her weight than one he could compare to his son.

He sees her flinch at the mistake but only smiles as if she’s flattered him after all, and says nothing of it. Instead he slides his wedding ring off and hands it to her so she can read the engraving. It’s in gold on the inside of the band, two tiny letters bound by a curly ampersand.

_M & F _

“Wow,” she says softly.

It’s simple - Veronica knows her jewelry - and it’s not expensive, but all the worth in it seems to be contained in those two letters, and she feels at once that she’s never touched anything so valuable in all her life.

“Wow is right.” He leans back and slides his hands into his pockets, looking suddenly like a little boy. She knows at once what he’s referring to - that there had once been a Fred and a Mary who had loved each other enough to set it in rounded gold and that now there wasn’t. She thinks he must see the sadness in her face, or at least the sudden fear of adulthood that grips her, because he grins luminously and takes the ring back.

“I think it’s about time we hit the dance floor, how about you?”

She watches his face for any hit of expressive sorrow, but his demeanour is all calm and all warmth. “Fred?” she asks quietly, and realizes it’s the first time she'd used his first name.

“What’s up?”

“Nothing,” she says suddenly, and smiles brightly. “Let’s dance.”

* * *

**part seven: what it means to tear up a dance floor**

* * *

_Think about it, there must be higher love,_  
  
_Down in the heart or hidden in the stars above_  
  
_Without it, life is wasted time,_  
  
_Look inside your heart, I'll look inside mine._

He leads her onto the polished dance floor with one hand locked tight in hers, weaving them in between the bobbing crowds of dancers. In the pink-blue-white glow of the lights the scene feels significantly like it belongs to an old movie - John Hughes would be about right, she thinks, or the end of _Back to the Future._

“Tell me if we’re dancing too close, or anything,” he urges as they reach the centre of the floor and she tugs him toward her, face bent to hers to speak above the music. Veronica laughs and throws her arms around his neck in reply, squeezing the back of his shoulder briefly before releasing him. Fred embarrasses easily and he blushes now, though it’s almost hidden to the colourful lights. She thinks of Archie - _they’ll never have known anything like you -_ and feels faintly guilty for it.

 _We walk blind and we try to see_  
_  
_ _Falling behind in what could be -_

_Bring me a higher love_

_Bring me a higher love_

_Bring me a higher love_

_Where's that higher love I keep thinking of?_

Veronica shuffles easily to the music, moving her shoulders and raking her hair back with one hand every time it re-settles. Fred moves effortlessly facing her, moving his body left to right with practiced ease, a genuine half-smile on his lips. The peace on his face is contagious and she feels a great sense of calm overtake her as the music plays, the disco ball tossing tiny ovals of light over the two of them and the gymnasium floor.

 _Worlds are turning and we're just hanging on_  
_  
_ _Facing our fear and standing out there alone_

He executes a little spin in front of her and she grins and mirrors it, tossing her hair so that it lands in disarray over her face. Fred laughs and moves closer to her and it feels fun again, feels almost like something worth doing on a Friday night. Their shuffling has reached an expert rhythm and she begins to feel the slipping of concern that she always feels on a dance floor, a swirling awareness of colour and music and sweat and dedicated focus. Fred’s impressing her - she wonders if his moves are so outdated that they’ve circled back around to hip. He looks just as carefree as she feels, and she has a grateful happiness for him, is relieved to have done something that makes him happy and relaxed.

 _I’m having fun_ , she thinks. _I’m having fun at a father-daughter dance. This is what it’s like._

“You might be the coolest dad I know,” she says the next time they get close, raising her voice to be heard over the music.

"I think you're the coolest kid I know."

"Cooler than Archie?"

Fred laughs, bopping to the music and ducking his head. “Archie’s not cool!” he yells as their feet move in time. “He wears cardigans from the GAP.”

He grips her hand and lets her spin under his arm, then pushes her out into the crowd so that they’re only joined by their outstretched grip. She grabs his shoulder for balance when he pulls her back up against his chest, and he grins at her.

“Ready to show them what we’re made of?”

Veronica smiles, remembering what he’d told her outside the gymnasium. “Born ready.”

_Bring me a higher love_

_Bring me a higher love_

_Bring me a higher love_

_Where's that higher love I keep thinking of?_

Crowds part to let them through as they dance their way into the middle of the floor, circling each other in tempo, alternatively clasping each other and moving away. No one else on the floor can match their energy. Fred had apologized to her before they’d moved away from the table - “I’m not very good,” he’d said regretfully, but he’d clearly been lying, or else deceived all his life. When she touches his chest next his shirt is damp with sweat, but there’s a genuine joy in his eyes and for a moment she can see what he must have looked like as an eighteen-year-old.

Other guests are watching them, have paused on the dance floor around them and in the blur of motion as Fred clasps her hand and waist she sees their smiles, a goldfish-bowl blur of happy faces. This is what it means to _tear up a dance floor_ \- she’d never understood the phrase so well until now.

“Lift me!” she says.

“Lift you?” He’s breathless, spinning her around. “This isn’t _Dirty Dancing_.”

“Just a bit.”

She places her hands on his shoulders and he holds her hips obediently, lifts her up in the air and turns in a semi-circle with her before setting her carefully back down. A few people whoop. Her cheering form is perfect and she lands neatly with her toes together, proud when she sees Betty at last among the crowd, costumed in a satin pink dress with matching rosebud-coloured heels. Betty’s hair is down around her shoulders, pulled back at each side with barrettes. She’s clapping hard and loud for them, eyes glittery in the colourful bright of the room.

The song ends and she feels a euphoric lightness in her chest as she faces the sparse crowd. Fred’s standing a bit back from her, hair limp, shirt untucked, an uncertain grin lighting up his face like a marquee. He looks for all the world like a rockstar who’s just finished a particularly gruelling set and is waiting for the applause to die down.

“They love us,” laughs Veronica, turning to speak privately to him in the noise of the room.

“Oh, they're all pity-clapping because I'm old and I got shot.” His eyes are warm with pride and laughter. “You, on the other hand, were amazing."

“New York moves.” Betty has rushed toward her with a glass of punch, and Veronica accepts it gratefully. The playlist has switched to a slow, crooning love ballad.

“You look beautiful, Ronnie!”

“You too, B.” Veronica wraps her arms around her friend and squeezes tight. “I’m glad you made it.”

“I’m glad _you_ made it.” Archie had no doubt talked his plan over in long, laborious sessions with his next-door neighbour. Betty steps back and admires Veronica’s dress. “Now do you see I was right about the long skirt?”

“You were right.” Veronica concedes with a laugh, feeling suddenly confident. A few paces behind them, Hal has offered Fred a glass of punch and an uncomfortable half-embrace which seems to be the male equivalent of a kiss on the cheek. “How long have you been here?”

“Ten minutes, maybe. We had a dance, but nothing like that.” Betty turns to Fred, eyes sparkling. “You look amazing too, Mr. Andrews.”

“Hey, Betts.” He wraps her up in a hug, and Betty’s eyes are wet when she pulls back. Everyone under the age of twenty-five in Riverdale seemed to have some kind of serious emotional stake in Fred Andrews, Veronica had noticed. She supposes she does too, now. Hal gives her an uncomfortable nod, because they don’t know each other very well, even after everything.

“Want to switch partners, Ron?”

 _No_ , she thinks, but agrees to it anyway. That’s apparently what you do at these events: even Myles is currently dancing gracefully at the far side of the room with Valerie, while Josie is pressed up against Valerie’s father by the punch bowl. Melody, who Veronica had seen holding Valerie’s hand earlier, is looking on with impatience. Betty squeezes Veronica’s wrist. “Then I’ll dance one with you, if you want.”

That’s worth holding out for, so Veronica lets Hal awkwardly turn her in a chaste circle while Betty and Fred retreat to their own corner of the floor. Fred holds Betty close to him, looking formal and gentlemanly and for all the world like the cover of one of her mother’s classier harlequins. They’re chatting easily, Betty’s face turned up toward him, and every so often one of them says something to make the other laugh. Veronica feels the brief burning of jealousy before the ridiculousness of it hits her and she almost cracks up. Fred’s all but on loan to her, for God’s sake. She needs to keep an eye on herself, she really does.

As the song’s winding down she feels a tap on her shoulder, and turns to see Betty, face flushed with pleasure. “Can I cut in, Dad?”

Hal mumbles consent and releases Veronica, and she feels her palms begin to sweat. _Woah girl_ , she scolds herself as Betty sets her hands on her waist and her heart does an unexpected leap of delight. _Betty's taken. And so are you._

Still, it feels nice to be pressed up against her, heartbeat to heartbeat, the satin of Betty’s dress soft under her hands, the skin of her bare back silkier yet. The next song is another slow one, and the lights have dimmed to a low romantic blue. The disco ball is turning slowly, the glowing ovals created by its mirrored surface floating over the darkened crowd. Betty smells faintly of some kind of airy, flowery perfume and Veronica inhales deeply as they turn together under the twinkling lights.  
  
"How are you liking your first Father-Daughter dance, Ronnie?"

Veronica smiles at her, rotating them in a careful circle on the floor. "It's fine, but Fred's given me the most outrageous idea for next year. Listen, I'm going to dress up as your dad-"

"You two are crazy." Betty moves one hand from Veronica’s hip and touches the white corsage. "Those are beautiful."

"Right? I thought it was so romantic when Archie texted me earlier asking what my favourite flower was. Little did I know Fred was scoping me out."

“Is he being an absolute gentleman? I’ll bet he is. You’re so lucky.”

"What were you two talking about?" asks Veronica curiously.

"Just baseball."

"Baseball?" Veronica reacts as though she’s never heard the word before.

Betty giggles. "It's our national pastime, Ronnie!"

"I've never played baseball in my life."

"You should ask him for some pointers sometime. He throws a mean fastball."

"Betty Cooper, listen to yourself," she teases. "I knew you were a rough-and-tumble tomboy at heart."

"I'm not. I haven't played since I was in the second grade."

"Well, why aren't you on the girls softball team?"

Betty shrugs slightly, an up-and-down of her shoulders under Veronica’s hands. “I don’t know. My mom-”

“Wanted you to be a cheerleader.” Veronica rolls her eyes, so Betty will know exactly how much store she should put in Alice’s priorities. “Come on, B. You should try out for the spring.”

“Maybe,” Betty murmurs. “Maybe I will.”

“Do it.” She brushes a loose lock of hair from Betty’s cheek, tucks it carefully behind her ear, but draws her hand back as Hal approaches them. The song had ended, the dance floor suddenly flooding again with light. Hal wanted Betty back, she realizes, and has to fight down a burst of possessiveness. Father-daughter dance, she reminds herself. Not you and the girl you’ll secretly always wonder about.

“Enjoying the dance, Veronica?” asks Hal. Fred is kind of hovering because there’s nowhere else to stand, and though there had been no kind of malice in Hal’s tone - he’d probably asked out of a dutiful politeness, if anything - she feels again the vague discomfort of being an outsider. That Hal knows exactly where Hiram is and isn’t, and that Veronica, whatever Weatherbee had promised, shouldn’t have been allowed through those double doors.

But Betty - god bless her bounciness, her sugar - breaks the moment wide open, fixing both Fred and Hal with a smile. "I was just telling Ronnie she has the best looking date here."

"Stop it," says Fred, within earshot, but blushes anyway. “Hal, let’s go sit down. Leave the young people alone.”

“That’s all right,” says Betty regretfully, giving Veronica’s fingers a parting squeeze. “I’ll stick with you, Dad.”

Veronica understands - this is supposed to be a healing thing, in many ways. Knowing Betty she’s probably rehearsed and re-rehearsed this evening in her head, has a plan to subtly push her dad toward reconciliation. Veronica was never one for planning, unless it was a good scheme (there was a subtle difference) but respects her for trying.

“How are you doing?” she asks Fred once they’ve parted, because for someone who’d been on an operating table recently he’d danced like a champion.

“I’m not that much of an invalid, Ronnie,” he teases, though his voice goes quieter and softer in the next moment. “I do appreciate you asking, though. And I might sit the next few fast ones out.”

“That’s alright with me,” she reassures him. “I’m tired too. I can’t keep up with you.”

“Stop teasing.” His eyes are friendly, warm. “Let’s get more punch.”

And maybe, she’ll think later, if they had, it would have been alright. If they had, it would have ended differently. If they’d gone straight to the punchbowl and sat back down at their table, shot the shit for a little while longer, joked about Archie’s fashion sense.

“Oh, wait,” he says, when _Jessie’s Girl_ comes on. “I love this song.”

And Veronica, knowing nothing, high on the delight of Fred lifting her in that half-circle on the dance floor and the warm softness of Betty’s bare back, laughs and says, “Let’s dance, then.”

* * *

**part eight: the part where it turns**

* * *

Veronica’s happy, he knows that. Genuinely happy, not faking it on his behalf. It gives Fred a warm feeling of purpose, a relief and joy he hasn’t felt in awhile: the soaring paternal high of being able to take care of someone. Fred wonders if Archie hadn’t planned it this way, if he’d known or even suspected that Fred would feel such immense gratitude for the opportunity to feel useful again. But he’s also having fun, the kind of fun he hasn’t had since the disaster that was that year’s Homecoming. Fun was hard to come by when there was a killer on the loose, harder when you were laid up in bed all day letting your inside knit back together to keep them in.

But this is fun, in simple ways. It’s nice to feel air on his skin again. It’s nice to tire himself out, to talk to people and eat sugary food and breathe and feel impatient and alive. Wanting to guess what Jughead and Archie would be up to, he glances at the clock, but the gymnasium clocks haven’t run on time since before he went to school here and the one beside the scoreboard still proudly proclaims it’s half past four in the afternoon. Chances were they were buried in some video game, or else a rental-store DVD. Jughead’s foster family are good people. Fred doesn’t have to worry about them. It won’t stop him, but at least he doesn’t have to.

Some of the balloons are starting to drift down from the walls and ceiling, floating appealingly around their ankles in glimmers of gold and silver. He lets Veronica tuck her arms around his neck for this dance, too tired now to try any more complex moves or Archie’s demonstrative shuffle. Her head rests neatly against the hollow birdcage of his ribs, and he wonders briefly what it’ll take before he stops looking like he’s a reject from a hunger strike, before someone can rest their head against his chest without wincing.

“Are you tired, Ron?”

“No, I’m alright.” She sounds momentarily lost somehow, far away, like she’s thinking about something else. She probably is. Whatever his merits, Fred can’t replace her real father.

She sounds like she needs a laugh so he dips her a bit, whispers the lyrics he knows inside and out against her ear until she laughs appreciatively and joins in. He loves her for humouring him, marvels at Archie’s luck for finding someone like Veronica. If dances gave out awards for good sportsmanship the trophy would be hers.

The garlands are still twinkling, the floor bathed in a bright pink for the upbeat song, confetti catching the light and crunching under their feet as they sway. He doesn’t see the door open, doesn’t hear whoever enters, whatever they yell if and when they see him from across the room. Later he’ll realize he felt her stiffen in his arms, though he doubts even then that she believed it - wouldn’t have spent a split-second trying to figure out if it was a dream or hallucination. But Fred’s watching the lights on the wall above the basketball net, and sees nothing coming until a hand lands heavily on his shoulder.

“Get the fuck away from my daughter,” yells Hiram Lodge, and punches Fred in the face.

The blow lands with a sound that draws every eye in the room, and Fred stumbles a half-step back, the throbbing pain of being hit completely lost under a detached sense of incredulity, as if he’s watching a movie of someone else’s life and an especially implausible plot point has just been introduced. His own fist comes up instinctively in defense but Hiram is faster, swinging with his left now, and Fred has enough time to remember that throwing with the left had been Hiram’s specialty in the boxing ring during high school, though not enough time to get out of the way. The second blow slices deep into the skin of his left cheek, the class ring Hiram wears on his left hand tearing the flesh open so that blood starts pattering on the floor.

“Don’t!” someone yells, “He’s just been shot, for god’s sake-”

Fred grabs Hiram with both hands and throws him, shoves him backward with all the strength in his body so that Hiram hits the refreshments table straight-on, the massive punchbowl sliding to the floor and exploding in a burst of sparkling faux crystal. The middle leaf of the table cracks like a gunshot and collapses, sending Hiram to the ground in a waterfall-like cacophony of shattering plates. People are running to get away from the glass.

Hiram gets up spitting with rage, grabs the collapsing table in both strong hands to pull himself up and overturns the rest of it. “FUCK YOU,” he yells above the din, eyes blazing like the eyes of an angry tempest. Fred stands with his head up and his heart hammering, blood running wetly down his face and onto his neck. Two nearby dads have reached for Hiram to try and hold him back, but Hiram moves too quickly for them, fingers curled at the ends of his outstretched hands like he’s ready to go for Fred’s eyes. He can see the muscles rippling under Hiram's shirt and realizes his recovering body is no match for him, realizes he's going to get the shit beat out of him by his high school rival. With the adrenaline beating in his veins the thought is as thrilling as it is frightening.

Hiram lunges at him, looking like some kind of nightmare come to life, but before even Sheriff Keller can intervene Weatherbee grabs him like he’s grabbing a wayward little boy and dislodges him momentarily from his course. The interception takes long enough for a bit of the animal rage to die out of Hiram’s eyes, and he stops trying to rush forward, stands in the middle of what used to be a punchbowl and only yells. Fred stares at the wreckage of wood and glass and realizes suddenly the scope of what he’s done, the length of floor where bits of glass have spread, registering faintly the words _bastard_ and _pervert_ from the hurricane of Hiram’s anger without really listening.

"I'm sorry," he says to Hiram, his mouth tasting like copper, but he knows it's to Veronica he's apologizing, standing off to one side in a puddle of punch and broken glass. Hal Cooper and Valerie's dad are holding his arms as if to hold him back, but though his arms stay up in defense there's no more fight in him. He can feel hot blood running down his cheek. Weatherbee is yelling.

"If I had the right I'd have you two back in detention, I've never seen anything so childish-"

"Sorry," He repeats hopelessly, lost in repetition of that same phrase, his cheek smarting like hell warmed over. Sheriff Keller’s hand twitches toward the place he’d carry a gun if he was in uniform, and for a moment that’s all Fred can see, his heart stilling and then beating horribly somewhere up in his throat at the motion, the one that carries the memory of the last time he’d seen someone move their hand to their hip-pocket and bring out a gun. The colourful dance seems to have faded to shades of grey, his ears ringing like he’d just left a concert venue. For an awful moment he thinks he’s going to pass out, go down on his face into a spill of broken glass and have no one to catch him.

Hiram is still spitting venom. "I'm going to send whoever shot you a fruit basket, Fred Andrews!"

Hal shoulders his way protectively in front of Fred, faces Hiram down on his behalf. Hal and Fred have never been close, but they've been neighbours for years, and that's enough.

“Stay the fuck away from us,” says Hal viciously. “You’re not welcome here.”

Veronica’s at Hiram’s side, her fingers interlacing with his and gripping tightly. Hal reaches out for Betty’s hand and takes it, almost defensively, as though afraid harm will come to her if he’s not holding on. Fred stays still where he is, slightly lightheaded, somehow unable to look directly into Hiram’s eyes.

He looks at Veronica, because it’s easier, but all the truthfulness is gone from her and her eyes are as hard as stone. He finds his voice at last, and in the dull silence it feels necessary to speak, though his voice comes out strange and unlike him.

"Are you going to get home okay, Veronica?"

"Yes, thanks." Her voice is ice cold.

“Fred-” protests Hal, sensing him about to leave, “that needs stitches, you need something-”

"I'm fine," he says to Hal, avoiding Betty's horrified gaze. "I'm sorry." He steps away, moving toward the exit in the same manner, apologizing to random people as he goes with glass crunching under his feet. “I’m sorry.”

He thinks someone’s still yelling at him, but he doesn’t stick around to hear the rest. At the exit he breaks into a run, lungs burning as if he’s been underwater, and far away in another world Rick Springfield is still singing _where can i find a woman like that?_ the sound muffled the further he gets away from the gym.

He pushes through the familiar double doors at the end of the hall, hurrying down the stone steps he’s rushed down a thousand times before. The cool night air is welcome on his skin after the sweat of the gymnasium, but he doesn’t stick around to enjoy it. He wants to get as far away from this place as possible, put distance between himself and the bizarre nightmare that this night has become.  
  
In the parking lot he can see the glistening black car that Hiram must have come in, and as he hurries toward his truck he realizes it's parked in the space beside his. Suppressing a wave of revulsion he yanks the drivers side door of the cab open and climbs in.  
  
_Where are you going?_ He asks himself as he streaks blindly through the streets, blood running down his cheek and neck. His hands are shaking wildly on the steering wheel. A pair of headlights swings into view in the opposite lane, streams past him, and disappears. _Where the hell are you going?_  
  
"Fred, breathe!" he commands himself, swinging the wheel to the right and pulling off to the side of the road. He parks and lifts his hands off the wheel, watching them tremble until they stop.

Logically he can’t explain the intensity of his panic, the reason he’d bolted out of the high school without a thought in his head but _getting gone_ , the way he still can’t breathe through his mouth sitting here, but he thinks he gets the gist of it - he’s afraid.  
  
He's afraid of himself. He’d propelled Hiram into that table with all the strength left in his undernourished body, like every muscle and tendon and nerve had been wired to put everything he had into that shove. As if he'd unleashed in one split second all the helpless rage he's left unacknowledged since a sick fucker named Geraldine Grundy rolled into town and decided to make his fifteen year old a man. He’s afraid of how fast and how certain that rage had run through him, as if nothing else had happened that mattered, as if anger was all he was made of.

In the dark chasm of his rearview mirror he can see the spinning lights of a patrol car. His mind jumps to that April night two years ago, unbidden, and the sick sense of dread along with the deja vu settles like lead in his stomach. He’s capable of worse than people think he is. He’s made more mistakes than people know.

He sits helplessly in the car, unmoving. The lights get closer and closer until the car stops behind him - after another moment the door opens and Sheriff Keller gets out. His boots crunch slowly in the gravel as he moves toward the truck.  
  
"Fred. You want an escort to a hospital?"

He stares straight ahead, saying nothing, fingers pressing against each other to keep from trembling.

_Breathe, Fred._

The panic has gripped him so deeply that he doesn’t think he can, his chest tightening until he can’t breathe at all, can’t force air into his lungs so that he’s forced to take it in tiny, aching chokes, but as he fights for oxygen he relaxes, feels his senses slowly returning. The frightening tingle in his head and extremities has left him.  
  
"Yeah,” he says at last, voice cracking under the effort to sound normal. “Thanks. Don't want to push my luck."


	3. aftermath

**part nine: hardball**

* * *

Sheriff Keller sees him through to the emergency room, maybe concerned that Fred will bolt if left unsupervised. Fred wouldn't have. He has no bolting left in him. Every so often Keller instinctively touches the hip where he usually keeps a gun, and Fred gets the same coppery, dry-mouthed feeling whenever it happens. When Keller finally excuses himself, he’s grateful enough to cry.

Alone in the waiting room he manages a text to his son - _you and jug get to bed okay?_  
  
_yeah._  comes the reply, immediately, because kids were born with chips in their heads nowadays and Archie could text faster than Fred could even think- _how's the dance?_  
  
_Good, thanks_. He types laboriously, after a period of thought, but closes his phone without sending it. He's never lied to his son. He doesn't want to start now.  
  
A gush of warm blood drips down his neck and he wipes it with the sleeve of his dress shirt without thinking. Fred looks at the bloody sleeve disappointedly. His dry cleaning bill is going to be astronomical. Assuming he has the money to spare (he doesn't- getting shot, among other things, was dreadfully expensive).  
  
_I wore this to my wedding, you bastard_ , he thinks, but can't muster up any real animosity. The marriage in question had been ruined long before his shirt was. And it’s hardly Hiram’s fault that Riverdale's so small and his life so uninteresting that his one nice outfit is his wedding clothes.  
  
When will he ever have to look nice again anyways? Business, his mind supplies, clients, presentations, but the empty words do little to arouse his unhappiness at the loss of his shirt. For a brief moment he thinks of Mary - women had a truly astounding knowledge of how to get blood out of linens, and though Fred's been doing laundry for years he'd need her expertise on this one - but he'd rather be punched in the face a few more times before he woke his ex-wife up at this hour to ask how the washing machine worked.  
  
He's drawing curious looks from the other patrons of the waiting room, many of whom are also oozing blood, but from much less interesting places. Fred cups his palm to his cheek and sits like that, waiting for the blood to harden and glue his torn cheek precariously shut. His eye keeps being drawn to a skinny, straw-haired kid of about Archie's age, cradling his elbow in a way that suggested his arm was broken. Fred fights down his sixth or seventh impulse to get up and go sit with him. If he's learned anything from tonight, it's that he should stick to parenting the one kid he's got.  
  
A nurse calls him in and stitches him up, quick and accurate and impersonal. He remembers asking if his shirt is done for, and she suggests half-heartedly that if he can make it to an all-night dry cleaners before the blood dries, maybe not, but that it shouldn't be his priority.  
  
He remembers FP, sixteen, stitching up a near identical wound for him on the counter of the boys bathroom, one fist pressed to his mouth to keep from gagging because FP hated blood, but he'd done it anyway- careful and gentle and only a little wobbly.  
  
_FP, I'd marry you in a fucking heartbeat_ , he thinks. _But I'd have to get a new shirt._  
  
By the time he gets home his head is swimming and his body hurts with a throbbing, all-over ache. He doesn't remember driving the car home, only that he was leaving the hospital one moment and in his driveway the next.  
  
He wakes up on the couch, with a headache spreading painfully across the front of his skull and his head feeling six times its normal size. He's definitely missed at least two cycles of medication he's supposed to have taken. Though that doesn't fully explain why he feels like he's been hit by a truck, or why he's still in blood-crusted evening wear.  
  
_Father-Daughter Dance_ , his mind supplies uselessly, and then, belatedly, _I don't have a daughter._  
  
Shut up, he chastises himself groggily for what's currently the stupidest thought he's had all day, shut up, and if whoever's yelling at him and shaking his shoulder doesn't shut up soon too-  
  
"Dad!"  
  
The magic word. He rolls over on the couch, his right eye watering immediately at the light. Archie, a blur of freckles above him, recoils in surprise.  
  
"What happened to your eye?"  
  
Fred touches his face and realizes why he feels so swollen. He'd forgotten the first blow, the one that had landed with glancing precision under his right cheekbone. I have a shiner, he thinks. I'm forty years old and I have a shiner from scuffling with Hiram Lodge.  
  
The memories of last night rush into his head then like a dam breaking and he screws his eyes shut. Hadn't he gotten changed? He must have gotten changed. He couldn't have just come in, collapsed on the couch and slept, could he?  
  
"Dad." Archie's voice is urgent, insistent. Fred grasps that one golden syllable like a lifeline.  "Veronica just texted, broke our date, and said 'tell your dad I'm sorry, not his fault." What the hell happened?"  
  
He loves Archie at once for not even considering the obvious- that mark on his cheek could easily be fingernails. The thought makes him suddenly, horribly nauseous and for an awful minute he thinks he's going to have to ask Archie to get him something to throw up into. Veronica's voice swims into his fevered brain: so Riverdale actually loves to celebrate its long history of incest?  
  
"Hiram Lodge is out of prison." He speaks slowly, choosing his words carefully. His mouth is so dry that his voice comes out a stranger's, as hoarse as an old man. "He didn't take kindly to finding me with Veronica."  
  
"He hit you?"  
  
"A couple times."  
  
"Shit." Archie leaves him for a moment, and then comes back. He feels a cool, blissful gratitude at the welcome rattle of his pill bottles and wonders if once you reach a certain age that rattle is the only joy you get in life. Hopes vaguely that he has his spine snapped by a cement mixer before that has to happen.  
  
He swallows the medication he's missed with the glass of water Archie presses into his hand and slumps back onto the couch.

“Drink it all.”

Fred rests the cool of the glass briefly against his forehead, but obliges.  
  
"I threw him into a table," he adds belatedly, once he's finished the water.  
  
"Go, dad."  
  
"It's nothing to be proud of." He acknowledges sternly, but feels minutely cheered anyway. "I don't think I'm welcome at your school anymore."  
  
"It was your school too." Something cold, hard, and wet touches his injured eye and he flinches hard.  
  
"Hey, I'm supposed to parent you," he says gruffly, feeling absurdly like crying. "Not the other way around."  
  
"How else am I supposed to learn how to take care of people?" Archie closes Fred’s fingers gently around the ice. "Don't worry about it." He feels the unspoken tenderness of what they're doing, the closeness of them, and it tightens like pain in his chest until he can’t breathe.  
  
"Should I call FP?"  
  
"No."  
  
"Geez, you needed stitches?"  
  
"Hiram wears a ring. He used to get me the same way when we were kids."  
  
"Kids?"  
  
"Teenagers. You're all kids to me."  
  
It occurs to him then that maybe it hadn't been Hiram's class ring but his wedding ring, and the irony is so poignant that he smirks.  
  
"What's funny?"  
  
"Nothing." He sighs. "Nothing's funny."  
  
“Yeah, you’re right, nothing’s funny.” Archie climbs off the couch and paces, slamming one hand into the palm of the other with fury. “I’d like to meet this guy face to face.”  
  
"Archie,” calls Fred, before he can get too carried away. “Arch-” He reaches out and catches his son’s arm. “Listen to me. I too would love to go around hitting everyone that ever hurt you. And I love you for it. But you can't. You can't live with all that anger inside you. And if you look at it from his perspective, I deserved it."  
  
"Deserved it!"  
  
"He knows I've been fooling around with Hermione-"  
  
"You weren't fooling around!"

“Arch-”

“You weren't _fooling around_. That's not what it was. You told me you loved her.”

Fred scrubs his forehead tiredly. “I never said that, Archie.”

“Yes you did! Yes you did! You said you through it was something real and it mattered a lot and you said you were in love with her-!”

“No I didn’t.”

“Yes, you did!”

Fred snaps. “Archie, I never said that!"   
  
“yes, you DID-!” Archie flies at him, furious, so that Fred has to grab him by the wrists. The redhead pulls out of his grip suddenly and backs up, arms folded, breathing hard.

“Sorry.” He apologizes heatedly, eyes sparkling with tears. “I don't even know what love is, okay? So forgive me if I think you mean it when you say that shit to me.”

Fred’s taken aback at the anger in his voice. “Archie-”

“I thought you and Mom loved each other too, but I guess I didn't understand that, either.” Archie had thrown his arms wide in annoyance, but he hooks them around his elbows now as though trying to hold himself together, like he’s trying to look tough despite it all. “And Geraldine told me she loved me too, but I guess not, so- I don't even know what love is, okay?!” His breath catches there, his lip suddenly shaking. He throws his hands angrily up in the air so that one rebounds with a resounding smack against his thigh when it comes down. “I don't even understand what love is because-” Fred reaches for him, and Archie jerks his arm away- “no one's ever going to actually love me! So-”

The end of that sentence disappears, swallowed into the ringing silence of the room. Archie swallows, his face very pale, his freckles standing out dark against his skin.

“I’m sorry.” He says it almost immediately, the toughness still in his voice, but dying. He folds his arms shakily and then drops them. “I'm sorry,” he mumbles again, eyes on the floor. He lets Fred approach him, lets him cup the back of his neck and pull him in for a hug, murmuring it again into his shoulder as Fred smooths circles on his back. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry.”

Archie’s shoulders are trembling under his hands. Fred pulls back and cups Archie’s cheeks with both palms, holding his head steady. There are tear tracks over his left cheekbone, and Fred gently brushes the wet skin with his thumb. “Archie, does your dad love you?”

He sees the soft dawn of understanding begin behind Archie’s eyes. “Yes,” he whispers, softly.

“How much?”

“I dunno.” Archie keeps his eyes down, voice thick. “Lots.”

“More than anything,” answers Fred softly, voice lost. He pulls Archie back against him in a hug. “More than anything.”

Archie swallows, arms tightening around him. Fred holds him back tighter. “You don't have to know what love is, Archie. It's okay. No one does. Especially at your age.”

“You do.”

Fred forces a smile, though Archie, buried in his chest, can’t see it. “That’s because I have you.”

* * *

  **part ten: seventh inning stretch**

* * *

  
He gets the package a few days later, a flat box in brown paper without a return address. Fred opens it to find a new suit, bloodstain-free and more expensive than he’d ever be able to afford on his own. It fits him perfectly, which is a little unnerving. There’s a small white card tucked into the sleeve.

  
You don't deserve to be caught in everyone else's crossfire. I'm sorry.

  
V

  
_Neither do you_ , he writes back, mails it under Betty's name so she'll open it. _Try to enjoy being a kid. Being my age isn't all it's cracked up to be._  
  
She returns a stick-figure drawing in ballpoint pen that reminds him of the notes he used to leave for his mom and dad when he was Archie’s age - two waving stick people and the rough outline of a building, bearing the hand-lettered sign **_ANDREWS & DAUGHTER CONSTRUCTION CO_**. It makes him smile, but he keeps it without replying. He's done enough damage. And it doesn’t do to keep up illicit correspondence with teenage girls for too long.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry hiram
> 
> i don't think this is the last chapter either


	4. the points that slip between the cracks

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has to do with nightmares and it gets very disturbing and a little graphic. Please take care of yourselves first and foremost, and be aware that it contains foul language, violence, guns, blood, and language that references sexual assault. 
> 
> On a more cheerful note - um

  **part eleven: tarmac**

* * *

 She falls asleep to the sound of her parents shouting.

A few months ago she would have been so happy. Would have loved her father unquestioningly, been on his side. She’d rehearsed Hiram’s arrival a hundred times already in her head- the romantic-movie way her mom and dad would kiss, the huge warm hug he’d have for her that would make Fred Andrews look like a glacier. She has re-structured the moment in a thousand different ways, but those two things remain constant. The kiss and then the hug. Often in bed at night she wraps her arms around herself to begin to imagine what it would feel like.

They'd go out for dinner that night at their old favourite restaurant - because in Veronica’s daydreams her father always had his fortune back, and they could jet off back to New York where their old haunts would be patiently waiting. And it would all have been a mistake, would all be cleared up, easily forgotten. And they would all move on.

But you don’t move on in this town. You don’t move anywhere. Some people plant as strong and steady as trees, and other people get chewed up by it. But no one leaves. That her mother had come back had been an anomaly. That her father had come back -

She knows it’s not true, but when she had seen him striding across the gym toward him her she had been certain that in some impossible way he had been there as her punishment, for being out on a date with Fred Andrews, for enjoying a life without him in it.

She tosses and turns in the bed that is still new to her, listening to the muffled din of argument from beyond the door. They are trying and failing to keep from waking her - she recognizes the abortive lowering of their voices from her childhood. Veronica doesn't understand why they’re blaming each other- it’s abundantly clear to her that she’s the one at fault. For all of it.

Alone in the dark, she wraps her arms around herself until she falls asleep.

When she dreams, it’s about airplanes.

* * *

**part twelve: spookers**

* * *

 

_He’s standing in the middle of the gymnasium, and the shattered remains of the punch bowl are glinting on the floor like fallen stars._

_“Fuck you,”_ Hiram is saying, suit damp, eyes blazing, _“Fuck you, Fred Andrews,”_ as loud and as angry as the day it had happened, only that’s the least of Fred’s worries right now. There’s something just out of his peripheral vision, something standing to the right of him. Something that he doesn’t want to look at. Because if he looks at it he’ll scream and scream and never stop. This he knows.

_Hiram smells his fear, smiles, a car-salesman smile full of teeth._

_“Look,”_ he says, the word like oil. _“_ _Look. ”_

Fred doesn’t want to look, but this dream is no longer his, and he finds himself compelled to obey. He turns his head to the right, and Archie is standing there, eyes bright with frightened, confused fear, the look that had been on Veronica’s face when the table had collapsed. There’s no reason for him to be there but his presence settles in Fred with the finality and foredoom of a certain truth. His palms are sweating and he thinks of buildings collapsing. Of death and dying. Catastrophe.

Archie is looking at Hiram now with open dislike, and Fred remembers him slamming a hand over and over into his palm in the living room. No, Archie, he thinks. It’s okay. Don’t be angry on my behalf.

Archie’s eyes hit his, and Fred shakes his head at him. _No._

(please)

Oh, god, what the fuck was -

(please no please)

A memory comes to him all at once- just a snatch of reality, but something he had forgotten all the same. The way Archie had looked standing there like that in the diner, and that Fred had shaken his head at him and thought

_No (please)_

_No, no, no, please -_

He starts walking toward Hiram, quickly, because it was imperative that he get there before Archie did. That he get to Archie as fast as he can. This is not a father-daughter dance. It might look like that, but it wasn’t, and something was going to go badly wrong, and he needed to get to Archie now before he

(jumped in front of the fucking)

He doesn’t remember all of the diner - that was normal for trauma victims, said the therapist they’d given him in hospital - dark places in your memory like damaged film. But he remembers this now. Needing to get to Archie now. Before the bad thing happened, before he

(he’s going to ju  
  
His therapist had said it was possible for these things to resurface years, even decades later - the way Hiram Lodge has resurfaced in the pink glow of the RHS gymnasium, he thinks, or the ways years-old blood feuds over maple syrup clans had a way of coming out in this place. He wishes this one had waited a little longer. He doesn't want to remember it.

(but you remember, don’t you, he’s going to run in front of the- )

Hiram’s hand twitches toward the spot that a police officer would keep a gun holstered, and Fred has that coppery fear-and-death taste in his mouth again, only it’s fine, he tells himself, because there is no gun, he doesn’t have a gun, there’s nothing there but empty space _only fuck, there’s a gun now, oh god he has a fucking -_

 **NO** , screams his brain, **NO N O NO  NO N O NO NO**

In the light from the disco ball, the polished silver glints as sharp and as beautiful as a star. Hiram aims the gun at Fred’s chest with a lazy swing of his long, tanned arm. Time is both impossibly slow and impossibly fast. Above their heads, the disco ball rotates in a lethargic, glimmering crawl.

Archie’s going to run. Archie’s going to run, but he hasn’t yet, so maybe there’s still time - maybe Fred can stop it, because everything’s moving so slowly -

Archie **_runs_** , runs in front of him, and the gun goes OFF with a blast as sudden and loud as dynamite, and Archie is blown backward against Fred as the dream shatters into a million intangible pieces but not before Fred sees the bullet go in, sees it with every sense somehow except sight and wakes up drenched and shaking, both hands clutching and clutching at the hot material of his shirt, momentarily certain that he’s drenched in his child’s blood.

He throws the tangled sheets off him and gets out of bed in a rush of pure adrenaline, makes it halfway across the room to the ensuite before the weakness in his bad side kicks in and one of his legs collapses on him. The bathroom counter bites into the soft flesh of his palms when he grabs it, bad leg outstretched behind him, ducks his head into the sink with the certitude that he’s going to throw up but only sobs out into the basin, sobs so painfully it hurts his throat and burns up his nose and behind his eyes.

There’s no blood. He keeps running his hands over his chest but there’s no blood, because it hadn’t really happened, it had all been a dream. He lets himself fall from where he’s hunched over the counter, pulls his knees up to his chest when he hits the ground and buries his face into his legs. His ensuite bathroom is the furthest point on this floor from Archie’s bedroom and that’s going to have to do for today, because he doesn’t have the strength to stop himself for anything.

It’s not his first time dreaming about Archie dying, but he’s been dreaming all year about coming across his son’s body - usually sodden and white in the river, like Jason had been, sometimes in the snow, pale and bloody and gone already, gone somewhere Fred couldn’t follow, couldn’t reach. He’s never seen it happen in front of him, never had the privilege of imagining what that would be like, the sound and the burst of light and the thick, heady, choking feeling of unspeakable horror. Thinking about it now brings a fresh wave of tears out of him from a depths he did not know he possessed.

He sobs himself ill with his forehead pressed into the cradle of his forearms, cries until he can’t anymore, until the bad, sick, nasty, _gripping_ in his chest passes and he starts feeling stupid for being here on the floor in the middle of the night. He’s grateful that he hasn’t woken Archie up, breathes slowly out and feels an eerie calm settle in him.

It had been a dream, a bad one, but a dream nevertheless: what his dad would have called a big spooker. He wipes his face and nose messily on his arm, tries his hardest to be forty again and not nine, tries not to think about spookers, big or otherwise.

 _“Fuck, Freddie,”_ he whispers to himself, scrubs his eyes with the rough heel of his hand. No one’s called him that on nigh on twenty years, it’s been longer still since he’d used it to refer to himself. It doesn’t help: if anything it makes him feel smaller. _“Just a dream.”_

Only it hadn’t been: It had been real. It had been so real. It had been what his big sister Linny would have called the Big Shit, as in, you're in the Big Shit now, Freddie, better buck up and get out of there before it dries. Or as in, this is the big leagues now, Freddie, not some fucking triple-A ball shit, but the real, bonafide, world series shit. Shit you need a therapist for. Shit you pull off the road for and lift your hands off the wheel until they stop shaking.

He can’t swallow breakfast the next morning, his throat closes like he’s having an allergic reaction and he can’t fit more than two forkfuls of food into his mouth because it just won’t go down. Eventually he scrapes it all into the garbage because he’s afraid of throwing it up. Archie watches him do it without speaking, but Fred doesn't have the energy to even half-explain.   
  
This is the shit you don't tell anyone about. 

* * *

**part thirteen: new york in july**

* * *

 

The tarmac is hot, hot enough that she feels it through her patent-leather shoes, her favourite white ones with the bows on the sides. But there’s a breeze ruffling the trees around the airport, ruffling their green leaves until it sounds like they’re whispering, and it’s cool and sweet on her face. The sky is very blue, the clouds full and cottony like sheep, and she keeps her neck craned up as they walk, the breeze occasionally blowing strands of her dark hair into her line of vision.

“There’s one,” says Hiram, who’s holding her hand. “Do you see him?”

She remembers that about him, that he’d always called objects and animals _him_ , except for boats, which were _her_ or _she_ \- like their brand-new yacht with THE VERONICA painted on the side in blue letters. Little Veronica nods, because she sees _him_ \- a red-and-white aircraft with two great big wings spread wide like a bird.

“Where’s that one going?” She does not use _he_ \- that is Hiram’s domain, a unique Lodge-ism that she thinks silly at the ripe old age of seven. From the trees that border the tarmac she smells a faint floral sweetness, carried over above the stink of the tar by the same breeze that was blowing her hair back.

“China,” he says, and she feels a burst of pride, because only her daddy would know to send planes somewhere so far away. On either side of the runway, brightly-coloured coffee advertisements stand out against the impermeable blue like flags on the fourth of July.

“Seen enough planes, Princess?” he asks her, and ruffles her hair.

She knows he wants to take her somewhere else - into the city for a museum, maybe, or to the new petting zoo he’d had built on their property so that her goat could have friends. Her goat was white with grey crookedy lumps on the head for horns. Veronica had fallen in love with him at a circus across the river, and her dad had offered a big man five hundred dollars in cash for it. (Him, she reminds herself, him, not it, like the airplanes going to China.) Her goat (the big He) wore a real-leather harness with jangling metal decorations, and would later that week chase Smithers around and around the estate with his head lowered and metal jangling in cacophony until Hiram called someone to corral him.

Veronica and Hiram have the whole day together today, which is unusual for them, but not yet rare. Under the sweet succulent blue of the July sky, facing the rustle-whisper of the trees, she squeezes his hand and feels him squeeze back. He’d take her anywhere, but she’d wanted to be here. Because Veronica likes to look at the planes.

“There’s another one,” she says, and points with an oddly heavy hand, as though her arm is being weighed down by lead. Hiram’s smile is a buoyant as air.

“There he goes,” he agrees, and the friendly tree branches wave from the other side of the tall fences while great stinking heat rises off the tar and makes their feet sweat. (Or almost, because the very rich don’t sweat. They don’t have to.)

“I love you, Daddy.”

“I love you, Princess,” he says, and she hugs him around his middle, wakes up a bit later with the taste of summer morning still in her mouth, though all the windows in their apartment are closed and January is creeping slow and dark into the second month of the year.

She waits for the nightmares, she does. But it’s that dream that finds her again as she slips back into sleep, the one about the planes. It had been real once: Hermione had tied her dark hair with white ribbons that morning, but it had come loose anyway and kept blowing into her line of sight when she craned her neck back to look up at the blue. She can no more forget this than she can her own name.

(Lodge, that was it. Veronica Lodge.)

_And are you your father’s daughter, Miss Veronica Lodge?_

She turns over in bed and thinks of New York in July, where the plane propellers turned lazily and the heat made ripples off in the grass while the fresh-poured tarmac turned the bottoms of her white shoes black. Where the trees sounded like they were whispering. 

Fred, she thinks.

Dad, she thinks.

And then the whispering rises up and she’s asleep.

* * *

**part fourteen: aint over (till its over)**

* * *

 

And then in the dream he's back in the diner again, and Archie’s already run and thrown himself in front of the gun so that Fred has to beat him there, has screamed and pulled Archie behind him, is backing him up with his arms around him whispering not my son, please, not my son, please, please, I'll do anything. The gun is pointed at his head, right in between his eyes, maybe six inches away- he's backing up, so it's a foot now, a foot and a half, his heart beating so hard it fills his ears, his breath completely still. His shaking hand reaches behind him for Archie’s, finds it, cold and clammy in his. Tightens his grip around it.

This is all real, this has all happened- twenty, thirty times before, once for real on a white-grey early December morning. The sunlight is slanting into Pop’s now so bright and blinding that it hurts his eyes. His feet feel heavy, stuck to the ground, and he knows suddenly that he's dreaming. Knowing this doesn't help. But it just has to happen, and end, and then it'll be over. If he can get to the part where the gun goes off, he can wake up.

Only the gunman lowers his gun.

He pulls the mask off, and it’s Hiram, dark eyes glittering, mouth twisted. “FUCK YOU,” he spits, and lunges, seizes Fred around the throat and jams the gun up against his cheek, presses it against the wound left from his ring, where the stitches are. “Fucking pervert, fuck my fucking daughter, will you, you fucking, absolute-" 

He hasn’t heard Hiram speak since their high school graduation, and the voice his mind conjures up is disturbing and hate-filled and cold. _I didn't_ , he tries to say, but he can't breathe. 

He lets go of Archie’s hand to throw his arms up and try to pry the hands off his neck, but Hiram has him too tightly, pressing hard on his windpipe. He feels the too-realistic gush of hot blood down his injured cheek.

_It's a dream, it's a dream, it's a dream._

He feels a scream building in him but it can’t tear it’s way out his mouth.

Hiram has him bent backward almost to the floor, the gun nudging into the open wound, pushing the flesh on his cheek open so that blood spills down his neck, his breath hot in Fred’s face:

“Your son likes to get fucked doesn’t he, why doesn’t he show me what all the fuss is about, why don’t I see what all the FUSS IS ABOUT!”

It breaks something in him and he screams at last, screams louder than he’d thought himself capable.

“GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME!” Fred screams. “GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME!”

“Dad!”

He wakes up in a tangle of sheets and blankets, his heart running a mile a minute, his palms hot and soaked. Archie is kneeling on the bed beside him, one hand clenched on his shoulder.

“Sorry,” he apologizes breathlessly, and touches the injury on his cheek, feeling only the reassuring roughness of stitches, though his fingers come away bloody. “Was I yelling?”

He feels sick that Archie had heard, tries to manufacture some excuse for what he remembers saying, but Archie just shakes his head. “No,” he says. “You were just kind of - crying.”

And that’s the worst part, he thinks, in retrospect, that he hadn’t even been able to raise his voice to defend himself. That he hadn't even been able to scream. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was super hesitant about publishing this chapter instead of just leaving this fic where it was, especially because we've swerved into such dark territory. It took me a long time to hit publish. I guess my decision-making went something like, "well, what the hell, i never thought I'd have the muse for a 20k fic about a father daughter dance in the first place, so might as well ride the wave until it crashes" with a delirious sprinkle of "nah, this is totally tonally consistent with the rest of it! we'll get back there!" 
> 
> and honestly, full sadomasochistic disclosure: i do like writing gruesome scary stuff. and i do think this is consistent with the rest of the piece: it's about trauma and aftermath, and the breaking-open of events. this chapter exists underneath and within the last chapter, it's just not acknowledged on the surface. 
> 
> also i'm a hoe so there's that
> 
> comments still remind fred he's a good dad

**Author's Note:**

> this is probably going to have ten-or-so "parts", and will end up being published as whole in two or three chapters. part six coming up is "absence of discipline", and it's the long one. 
> 
> i promise all the characters i tagged will show up 
> 
> comments inspire me very much and remind fred that he is a good father!!


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